Arpeggio: Crimson Harmony
by FuriabuiaFA-18
Summary: Fog battleship Roma was the perfect weapon: cold, calculating, composed and obedient. It all changed with a single mission. Now her fate rests in her hands alone...but she is lost. Which path should she take? She needed a human. One, very specific human. But he could be forever out of her reach.
1. Chapter 1

**ARPEGGIO: CRIMSON HARMONY**

 **A/N: Readers and reviewers, hello!  
** **So, i'll try to be brief: this is my first story, and i'm pretty interested to see what it could turn out to be. The idea for the plot came to me a while ago, and i finally gathered the courage to write it down. I should point out that this story is set in the anime storyline, but there are going to be significant differences that will be explained in future chapters, as i expand everything. That said, if there are any errors in the plot or the language i'd like to kindly ask you to point them out to me: i've done my best to proofread everything, but i'm not a native english speaker. Constructive criticism is also welcome.  
Thank you, and enjoy your read!**

* * *

 **Chapter 1: Virus**

City of Taranto, one year after the start of the Fog War.

An agonized scream of pain and anguish pierces the silent night.  
It is the scream of a man with his heart broken.  
In his embrace lies his wife, soon to be mother, but not in this world. Not anymore. Behind him, the city of Taranto burns, its buildings falling and its citizens long silent; and in front of him, the cause of all this misery.

It was a merciless, brutal affair: the Fog ships had acted with the express purpose of reaping as many innocent souls as they could, first targeting any highway and road leading out of the city, catching the many people who were evacuating and cutting off those who remained inside; they then proceded to obliterate every single city block with an advancing bombardment, from the coast inland and finishing in the outskirts of the city.

The result was a massacre: even after the rise of the sea levels the city remained prosperous due to its peculiar position, with population reaching the 160.000 souls, of which none escaped the enemy's grasp; but Andrea Ribaldo, a 23 years old young student and his wife Laura, also 23, managed to survive by rushing their car _towards_ the advancing bombardment, slipping into the ruins of the docks in between salvos and almost escaping their doom… _almost._ Then one of the giant dock cargo cranes suddenly crumbled directly in the way of their car, and to avoid it Andrea lost control: they went careening through the rubble until the car violently impaled its nose on a long piece of debris.

After the crash, Andrea managed to get himself and Laura out of the wreck, feeling quite relieved to have been this lucky; then he took a better look at Laura, and he paled.  
A sheet of twisted metal had lodged itself into her thigh, and while he was extracting her from the car it came off, revealing a grievous wound on her leg which, judging by the quantity of blood she was losing, had cut the femoral artery.

Laura knew her time was limited: "Andrea…I'm scared..." she said crying, "I don't want to leave you here alone, and our baby…i wish i could..."  
"Shhh, what nonsense are you saying..!"  
Andrea replied almost angrily; "I'm going to find something to stop the bleeding, and then we, yes we, are going towards the mountains to live happily, where those _fottuti_ sea monsters can't reach us and our child!" Laura smiled at the thought, but still continued to grasp her husband.

"Laura please, let me go, i need to find.." he started, but she cut him off.  
"It's too late…i feel myself slipping, please stay here…i don't want..*sniff*...i don't want to _go_ alone!" by now tears were falling down from both of their faces, but she continued to talk.  
"Promise me, _amore mio_ , promise me to live on.." she looked down at her rounded belly, "...for both of us. Promise me." He was fighting hard not to cry openly, for he didn't want his wife's last memory to be of him in tears, when he promised. He didn't know how he could possibly do that, but he couldn't think about that, he promised because the love of his life wished him to.

They shared a long, wet and warm kiss. "I'll love you. Always." he confessed.  
"I know...and i'll wait for you." she said, wincing at the pain of her wound, "Now hold me…it hurts, and i feel cold…ahh, much better." she relaxed as she felt the heat of his body pressed against her.

They hugged each other tightly, until he slowly felt her body getting limp and start to lose its warmth; he looked at her, and saw her in a strange serene expression: her beautiful, well rounded face was relaxed in a small smile, and her long straight brunette hair was disheveled in the same way it was after the numerous times they made love. Andrea smiled; she was so beautiful…and yet so unmistakeably soulless.  
His wife was dead. The only one person in this world whom he cared for…was gone.  
He stared blankly at her body for a long time, his mind trying to understand…then he started crying, a few tears first and then rivers, but it was not enough as the pain in his heart caught up with his lungs, and he let it all out.

* * *

A few kilometres out at sea, a lone female figure was looking at the burning city, locks of wavy black hair descending all the way down her back to her rear, and deep blue eyes that were narrowed in a sharp expression as she tensed: "I thought you said there were no survivors, Fiume! What was that?"

The reply of her heavy cruiser escort came soon enough: " _Roma_ , _I'm reading a single life sign in the city area, but the fires are making it hard to pinpoint its location; the thermal scans are all messed up._ "  
"It's not a problem; being the only one among us equipped with a mental model, i shall go ashore and scout for it myself. Fiume, keep watch with your ranged sensors; Oriani and Carducci, you two destroyers will get close to the port with me and lend help if this body is in danger, or defective in any way."  
" _Affermativo!_ " Chorused her three escorts.  
After steaming into port, Roma got up from sitting on the bow and used a long holographic stair to step on the closest pier. Her readings were much clearer now: the human was close, and it wasn't moving at all; maybe it was wounded...yes that was probably it. All the easier to finish off, then! And so she set out to end her bloody work.

At that time, Andrea _had seen_ the battleship and her destroyers moving into the harbor; usually, being a war history nerd, he would be awed and completely extatic at the sight of such big and (almost, if not for the advanced technology) historic ships, armed to the teeth with cannons, torpedoes and machine guns, but at this time he couldn't care less; he was too much absorbed in crying and picking up the pieces of his will to live to notice what happened and what it meant for him, or else he could have done something like _running the hell away_ before the raven haired battleship girl came in sight of him.

Not that it would've mattered, she would have found him anyways, but he could at least have tried; still he raised his head, to look at whom he presumed was another survivor…hypothesis that crumbled the moment he saw the girl's arm spawn a wide and crimson energy blade, which hissed malevolently with every motion.

"So...you have come to kill me, whoever you are…" Andrea said with a broken voice as she closed in, "I don't have any more reason to live. You killed my wife, and you killed my child, before he or she even lived," she kept closing in, "You may as well kill me and let me join them." he continued, standing up and locking his green, watery eyes on her abyssal cold ones "…but i have one hope. That one day you will understand what you have done…and when that day comes," suddenly all his grief turned to cold anger as he finished in a low tone, almost hissing out the words, "remember me…you monster." Then the blade plunged straight through his heart.

He recoiled in pain, but stayed standing, his eyes looking defiantly into the emotionless pieces of glass that were the battleship's, before she removed herself from his insides, blood spewing onto Roma's white toga styled dress, and he slumped to the ground, where a new crimson pool was forming beneath him and joining that of the blood of his beloved wife. The scene would have left the battleship almost unfazed, if not for one detail.

The blood of that last human, strangely enough, was disappearing from her arm and from any point on which it splurted on her bare skin…where was it going? It wasn't dripping on the ground, nor evaporating…suddenly she started to _feel_ something; _disgust_ was the first emotion, then came _horror_ as she looked at the crimson painting that laid in front of her, and then a gut-wrenching _fear_.

"What's happening to me?!" she shrieked, and she heard someone responding, one of her escorts…but she couldn't understand her, and now she couldn't even hear anything! That…infection was...damaging..?..her from the inside! The mental model must have been defective, and now she _really_ regretted taking her core along, and _what the hell was that_? …Whispers? Finally, her systems were coming back online. She was going to examine and analyze everything that happened with her escorts, repair herself and seek out any and all flaws, making sure this thing couldn't happen again. Hell, that was _scary_. It was then that she heard them.

" _Kill the fog…"_ Ehh? " _k_ _ill the fog…"_ what the hell? Roma slapped herself hard to try to reset her sound matrix, but the interference was still there: _"kill the fog...that is the demand of the ones you murdered…_ "

"What? Who's that?" Roma asked, confused.  
"K _ill the fog…that is wish of the city you burned…_ " that choir was soon joined by another; _"look at us..you monster"_  
"What are you saying? No, those were orders, the Admiralty Code is absolute, it can't be wrong!" but the voices continued, " _kill the fog…monster!...that is the scream of the innocents you reaped…_ "

Roma was starting to panic by now, for the volume was increasing and there were even _more_ voices, and she was starting to feel a wave of emotions she couldn't understand, threatening to overwhelm her, " _kill the fog…that is the prayer of the heart you broke…why did you do this?...you are a monster!...kill the fog…that is the cry of the unborn you butchered…_ " then screams joined the whispers, and visions of hell itself appeared before Roma's eyes. At this point her processors were completely overloaded, and she started crying, tearing her hair off and clawing at herself with such a desperation to expose the flesh, that her nanomaterials failed to heal. Suddenly, she fell to her knees as the voices continued her psychological destruction. "no..stop..no..why..NO! NO!" ...and then she looked at her last, fresh kill.

An agonized scream of pain and anguish pierces the silent night.  
It is the scream of a girl with her mind shattered.

And then the concert started anew, and laser cannons sang their deadly song. But instead of the deafening roars of city-destroying flames and the screams of dying people, other sounds could be heard: the pained groans of shredded armor, the explosions of intercepted missiles, the agony of nanosteel hulls as corrosive torpedoes bit holes into them, and the crying of broken, sinking keels…and then silence.

Only one ship still stood above the waves: her big imposing hull was a lucid black, with crimson glowing neon stripes, that kept going like open wounds along her whole length; above the deck, a towering sickly white superstructure, and nine blood colored main guns in three turrets adorned her form.  
From her bow, an holographic passageway extended to the docks of the ruined city of Taranto, and a lone crying girl, with a torn white toga and long shredded black hair, could be seen climbing it towards the deck of the silent battleship, bringing with her two long and narrow anti-gravity pods.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Hello again! Furiabuia here, i just wanted to say that now that my exams are finished (for now, anyways) i should have more time to dedicate to this story, and as such i hope to be able to release around one chapter a week; there may be more or less depending by how inspired i am at the moment, or how much free time i have on my hands, but you get the idea. That said, i retire to the narrator's quarters and leave you with this second chapter; as for the first one, constructive criticism is welcome and appreciated. Enjoy!**

* * *

 **Chapter 2: Hope**

Day 01, Time: unknown, Location: unknown.

Wakefulness came slowly to Andrea: he felt strangely warm and light-headed, and he also noticed a curious absence of weight, as if gravity no longer held him: "So strange.." he thought, "is that what being dead is like?"  
Being captivated by this sensation, he tried to move his arms around, but noticed that his movements were kind of sluggish and impeded, as if he was swimming, and then he hit something solid; keeping his hands in motion and following the form of the object, he noticed that whatever it was, it was surrounding him.

The situation was getting stranger and stranger by the second, and he started thinking that he might not be actually dead: in fact, he could hear himself breathing, and dead people don't need to breathe, do they? He tried to open his eyes but all he could see, no matter where he looked, was a _certain sickly red colour_ , and just that colour; he couldn't see anything else because of how _thick_ the damn thing was!…Wait, thick? He started to touch his body, and felt a mask on his face and plastic tubes connected to him in strategic places, and then the horror of his situation hit him: he was trapped and kept alive in a holding tank, with no way to escape.

Just as his breathing and heartbeat skyrocketed on the onset of panic, he felt some liquid being injected into him by the IVs attached to his body, and whatever that fluid was he felt himself calming down, even if apparently his mental functions were not affected; because of this, there was absolutely nothing to dull the _appalling_ amount of pain when the tubes, especially the front and rear catheters, violently disconnected; shortly after it, even though he was still shocked by the pain, he heard a loud gurgling noise as the liquid he was suspended in was drained, bringing down the tank glass with it.

Subjected to the equalizing force of gravity once again, Andrea fell hard on the metal floor below the tank, breathing heavily and shivering at the sudden cold: _yes_ , he was very much _alive_ , and it hurt like a fucking bitch!  
And that's when he heard a hoarse, feminine voice whimpering quietly, "You…you're awake…finally."

As the pain subsided, Andrea started to take notice of his surroundings: he was in a rather wide, dimly lit room, with a low ceiling; its only ornaments were his empty holding tank and another one just next to it, this one still full of red liquid, both fixed against one of the walls with strange pipes and machinery connecting the tanks themselves, and a pair of white, menacing looking beds equipped with robotic arms, that were situated on the other side of the room, just in front of him.

A pair of side doors, or rather, _hatches_ were located on two opposite directions leading out of the room, but the most noticeable feature was that pretty much everything was made of the same futuristic-looking material: to Andrea's eyes it seemed to be steel, but with sophisticated composite fibers weaved into it in intricate exagonal patterns, even if the colour could vary from the white of the surgery tables and the tanks, to the chromed walls that reflected the dim, light blue neon lights, to the matte gray of the floor.

Andrea tried to stand up, but his body rebelled and he fell to his knees, retching from the shock of his revival procedure and shivering from the cold; he was buck naked and covered in fluid, and the temperature he felt was quite sharply low. At this, Roma cried in fright and moved quickly to his side to scan him, calming only after she had confirmation that those were temporary symptoms and after increasing the temperature in the room to avoid him risking hypothermia, then she retreated to where she was before, sitting cross-legged on the floor near the tanks.

Feeling less cold and having stopped retching, Andrea managed to sit as well, putting himself a fair distance from both the cold walls and the girl, whom he now eyed for the first time in his (second) life. The battleship had gone from being a fiery angel of death, to a sobbing wreck: her long, raven-coloured locks of hair were torn and cut irregularly along the whole length of her once beautiful mane, and her abyss-blue eyes had turned red from the amount of tears she shed; her snow-white and red toga was shredded here and there, exposing bits of the soft skin underneath, and her arms sported scratch marks and dried blood from the wrists to the exposed shoulders.

They stared at each other for a time, and the young man was quite confused: "How am I alive?" he asked at nobody in a hushed tone, raising his eyes to look at nothing in particular, "Why am I in the same room with the girl who killed me? Why isn't she striking at me? And why is _she_ looking like she was tortured? And where am I?"

To his surprise, Roma answered, crying: "We are aboard my hull. I…I was the one who revitalized you. After I…*sniff*…I stabbed you that day, my body absorbed your blood and…that t-triggered protocols I didn't know I had that sent me into overload! *sob* I…I saw _everything_. Trough your memories, I saw the attack…the suffering, the s-s-s-screams, the blood and the c-corpses… _so many corpses_ …*sniff* I sunk my…my companions, but I couldn't manage to end myself. I couldn't stop…crying since then, and I don't know what happened to me!" after a brief pause to wipe her tears, she continued: "I brought you aboard in stasis, hoping that once revived, you could explain to me what it is that I'm…feeling, and how to get rid of it, because" she started tearing again, " _Because it's horrible and I can't take this anymore!_ " she bawled, hugging her long and pale legs.

The young man stared at her blankly, trying not to cry himself, for he remembered what happened to his wife that night, and it hurt. _A lot_. Because of that, he couldn't quite bring himself to sympathize with his assassin even in her wretched state, but he hated seeing women cry, and as such the sight in front of him was still capable of moving his heart.

"I have a lot of questions, but they can wait." he said, in a sad but gentle tone of voice, "What matters is that I don't know what I did to you nor do I know how to take it away, and I wouldn't do that even if I could. It's the least you deserve for what you have done. But-" he continued, as the sobbing and the bawling went on, "-the fact that you feel like this means that you _do_ possess humanity." ...He sighed, and remembering the last words his wife said to him, he made a decision.

"I can't forget what you have done…nor forgive you for it, and I probably never will. But I can help you learn how to live with it, and how to handle human emotions: the guilt, sadness and fright that you're feeling now, but also joy, satisfaction, and others that are too many to count. Maybe even love…if you will ever find it. This is my offer: take it if you wish, and I'll set you on the path."

To Roma those words were like a life sentence; all the torturing emotions she felt, coupled with despair at the prospect of staying in her cursed condition for her whole lifespan and the frustration spawned by Andrea's refusal to just cure whatever infection he bestowed onto her, were bringing her closer and closer to another breakdown. And the assumption that she now was human? Preposterous, how could that be?!

" _No….no…nonono nononoNO...noooo_ …this is not possible! I can't stay like this forever, I'll go insane!" she cried, directing a pleading look at Andrea, "If what I am feeling are human emotions, and you won't take them away, then I really can't be one with the Fog anymore! But…I also can't keep living like this…and now I don't even have the will…*sniff*…to initiate my self destruct sequence! It does seem that your offer is…my only… _hope_? Is this...hope that which I'm feeling..? It feels…good." she concluded, with the faintest hint of a smile.

Still, there was something holding her from embracing that hope completely: "There is one more thing I need to tell you…the woman next to you, she was your wife, right?"

Andrea jumped at his feet and looked at her with a glimmer of hope himself: "Yes, she was! Did you manage to revive her as well?"

Roma, if possible, paled even more at the question and resumed weeping: "N-no…it was too late for her. Cellular degradation had started already in her b-brain by the time I put her in stasis. Yours was relatively unscathed, but…" she explained, as Andrea fell to his knees with his hope crushed, "…and that is not all. Her body, unlike yours, was mostly intact, and I had to e-examine it to understand your biology and putting together the revival procedure; I would have stopped at that, but you needed a h-heart…and a lung…and countless other organic t-tissues, which…I took from her. Then, to be able to sustain your body, I had to..I had to d-decompose hers at molecular level with nanomachines…and inject the p-product, the nutrients that you n-needed into your body…I'm-I'm s-sorry, I'm soo so-sorry, there was- there was no other way…"

Andrea was destroyed. It was not enough to have his wife _die in his arms_ and be killed himself, noooo, whatever divinity was in charge of planet Earth was so cruel to decide that he was to be brought back to the realm of the living… _by feeding him his own wife_. Silence fell in the room, such silence that Andrea could feel his...no, _her_ heart beating inside his took hold of his mind as he slumped to the floor, asking a question which almost went unheard: "So…that liquid I was suspended in…was…"

The answer was short and quiet, a little, damning whisper: "Yes… yes it was…"  
Then Roma whispered again: "But…there were still signs of life in her body. I didn't know what it was at first, but I believe it should be what humans are before the beginning of thir life cycle; I managed to stabilize it with nanomachines, and isolated the organ that contained it in the tank next to yours…as of the last scan I did, the organism's cells were alive and slowly growing in numbers…" A feeling of relief hit Roma as she finished her confession; now all she could do was hope that the man would not take back his offer.

That same confession shook Andrea out of his trance. Did the girl just say that she saved his child? He looked at the closed tank, full of crimson coloured fluid: somewhere, in there, his son (or daughter) was growing, kept alive and safe by his mother, although in a somewhat twisted way. "You…you saved me, and maybe even saved my child," he said, while slowly raising himself on his feet, "..you still have much horror and suffering to atone for, but you are already well on your way to be human, more than you think. You took the path of humanity even before I offered my hand in help." He concluded, looking over the hunched form of Roma.

"So…will-will you be my c-captain?" she asked, hopeful.  
"Captain? Is that a figure of speech?" Andrea asked, baffled by the question.

"Didn't I tell you before? I am, or was, a ship of the fog; we are aboard my hull, but _both_ my hull and the girl you see…are me. _I AM the ship_. So, I will ask again: _will you be my captain?_ "

It was now Andrea's turn to be afraid, for he had now something to protect, something very, very dear and precious to him…and to protect it, he needed the girl in front of him. Still, there was no hint of that fear in his voice when he replied, just _coldness_. A coldness born of pain, anger, and a broken heart. " _Yes. Yes I will._ "


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: Needs**

Day 01, 17.00 hours, somewhere deep in the southeastern mediterranean.

Andrea Ribaldo was leaning on the railing placed on the bow of his newly acquired battleship, admiring the sunset: the scene was spectacular, with the angry looking solar disk slowly sinking beneath the calm sea, its rays of light seemingly setting the water itself on fire. Red sea, and red sky, as far as Andrea could see, stretching all the way to the horizon. Having never had the chance to get far from any shore, the vastness of it all was a little intimidating to him…but he had a feeling that he would grow to love such a sight. Still, the events of the past few hours had given him _a lot_ of food for thought.

After he reluctantly accepted his charge as a captain, the ship-girl (is it correct to call it, no, _her_ -that?) seemed to heal almost instantly, both physically and psychologically: her scratch wounds disappeared with no scars whatsoever and her torn hair grew back, soon leaving Andrea facing the same, deadly angel that took his life.

She was quite the beauty: at 1,78 m (5,84 ft) she could almost rival Andrea's own height of 1,84 m (6,04 ft) and she sported long, thick legs which flowed into wide but supple hips, and a belly that was a little fat but without the slightest hint of folds or rolls, or at least none that could be seen from her white and red roman toga. Such article of clothing seemed to have been made to accommodate her curves quite comfortably, giving her ample freedom of motion and showing off only her svelte arms, her bare shoulders and occasionally her legs, thanks to a slit on its right side; all the while subtly underlining the generous forms of both her well hidden bust and her ample rear.

Her complexion was pale: not sickly, but delicate with a rounded face that suddenly sharpened at her chin and a tiny mouth framed by full, pink lips. Her nose, though nicely sloped, was actually a little large and seemed to be like a piece placed there from the wrong _Lego_ set, but it gave her an air of maturity she would otherwise be missing. Her visage was itself adorned with a mane of unruly and wavy hair, the same colour of raven feathers, kept loose so that it reached all the way down her back, stopping just before the hips. And then there were her eyes: perfectly proportionate to the rest of her facial features and definetly the most captivating among them, they were like gates to an abyss of unfathomable depths…one could lose himself, looking straight into those oceans of living, thick blue.

But it was looking in those very eyes that Andrea saw what the true change was: where once there was nothing but emptiness and unsettling tranquillity, now there was a storm of epic proportion: sadness and guilt were evident, but not crippling anymore, stemmed by a tide of rushing hope that brought a little smile to the girl's face.  
"So, captain, shall we introduce ourselves?" she said in a quiet but determined voice, only for Andrea's reply to stun her quite badly:  
"Ok, that's good, but…I would kinda _really_ like some clothes right now. I'm still buck naked, ad humans don't feel much at ease while they are _completamente nudi_ in front of other people…"

"Oh…I understand…please wait a moment." Roma replied after the initial confusion, walking to the nearest wall and seemingly sucking particles of it into her hand, which she then used to give form to the same clothes Andrea was wearing at the time of his death: a pair of blue jeans, a full set of underwear and socks, a white t-shirt with a stormtrooper helmet on it, and a khaki jumpsuit. Andrea was quite impressed, and he made a point to remember himself to ask the ship-girl for a full description of what exactly she was capable of.

"Much better…so, where were we? Ah, that's right. My name is Andrea Ribaldo, 23 year old human and former engineering student, married to Laura Galizziari and father-to-be…recently a widow, and currently an undead. That was a joke." The remark at his wife's murder did not escape Roma, and her small but bright smile dimmed a little.

"I am the Fog battleship Roma, which core was forged from my ancestor ship who lies in rest beneath the waves. Formerly second in command of the Mediterranean Fleet of Fog and first ship among it to receive the prototype of the human mental model…recently turned rampant, and gone rogue. From now, under your command… _capitano._ "

Silence followed those small formalities, until Andrea spoke up again, astonished: " _The_ Roma? The Littorio class battleship? Why would a known and respected symbol of my country's sacrifices in a war long past come back almost a century later and haunt the coasts of its _patria_ , slaughtering thousands of its citizens? Why? Why did you do it?! You had been built to protect those people, _your_ people! Not to massacre them!" He shouted.

Roma recoiled heavily at her captain's outburst, and her eyes fell to the ground in shame. It seemed that the tears were about to come back again, and that she would again succumb to guilt, before she gulped and managed to look Andrea straight in his eyes.

"I did it because I was ordered to," she said, in a hoarse but angry tone, "and I complied, because I did not possess neither the notion of right or wrong, nor a sense of duty towards anything other than the admiralty code, which are the sacred rules set in stone for all of the Fog to follow. That is why. And while my core and basic template was taken from the Regia Nave Roma, I am _me_ , not any past ship magically brought to life! I don't feel like I belong anywhere, nor do I have a nation or a people to claim my loyalty! As do the rest of the fleet of Fog: as far as we all know, we were _born_ from the sea and we were bound _only_ to obey the orders of our admiralty. So tell me, why should I care about which group of humans live or die!? Or how many of them? All I care about are the deaths that were _my responsibility,_ how to atone for them, and how to live with myself and what i've become! Why should I care about a war that is not mine anymore?!"

Seeing the look of defiance in Roma's eyes and hearing the words spit out of her mouth, Andrea felt his anger rising up. He wanted to hit the battleship, and he wanted it _badly_. But he resisted the urge.

" _Come osi..?"_ he seethed, "How dare you..! You, of all Fog, should know why you should care! You, of any amongst your kind, should be the one to fucking _understand_ that causing gratuitous suffering to _anyone_ is fucking wrong! You have seen my memories: how many more of my kind are going to scream in pain, their body cut in half and their insides spilling out?! How many more children will burn, crying for their mother? How many loving hearts will have to be broken by your comrades, before you feel shitty enough to do something about it!? Tell me! _Tell me_!"

* * *

Back on the battleship's bow, with the sun now under the horizon, Andrea was recalling what happened next: after that short but heated confrontation, and after lots and lots of tears on both sides, they agreed that continuously looking at the past was a sure path to mutual destruction. If they wanted to survive, there were plans to be made, and soon.

Andrea needed provisions: for what concerned drinkable water, Roma still had enough resources to remodel one of her non-critical rooms into a water purification and storage plant, while for food they would need to sail to a coast and come ashore, asking for help from a human community (how they were planning to actually obtain the food was left to a vague "Improvise", to the annoyance of the battleship); fishing was another option, but since none of them had any ideas on how to proceed it was discarded for the moment. Besides, Andrea's body needed nourishments that could only come from a somewhat balanced diet, and there were some things that fish could not provide.

Another issue to solve was Roma's desperate need for new nanomaterials, which she apparently required to do practically any kind of operation that was not combat-related, from upgrades and refits to ordnance fabrication and field repairs: in the mad brawl that happened in Taranto's harbour during her rampancy, Roma took a lot of damage from both her destroyers's torpedoes and her heavy cruiser escort's fire, damage that needed the vast majority of her full stock of resources to be fixed. After that, most of the remaining nanomaterials were used by the battleship both to build her new medical room, and to execute Andrea's revival procedure…something which brought the young captain thinking back again, to what happened earlier that afternoon, precisely one hour ago.

He and Roma were ashore in a coastal village in the Peloponnesus, trying to get a both decently sized and varied supply of food from the locals; luckily Roma's human form was capable of speaking any human language, including greek. When Andrea questioned her about it, she revealed that all ships of the Fog could speak in whatever language they wished to, but had a preference for the one spoken in the country of their historic counterparts, in her case Italian; still, the problem of convincing the locals to part with their hard-earned larders remained, for they were not convinced that the menacing battleship quietly moored in plain sight near their small pier was friendly.

Plus, as Roma reported from the heated conversation she was having with the town's elder, named Georgios, from the villager's point of view the quantity that they were demanding was _absurdly_ large for just two people: more than half would rot away by the time the other half was eaten, and their entire village would be deprived of sustenance for the month! They would need to ask charity from the nearby towns andoooooohhhhshit!

Suddenly a tall, holographic fence made of red hexagons materialized out of thin air, surrounding the fishermen with which Roma was arguing: "I'm getting tired of playing nice. I'm going to give you _one_ chance of bringing us what my captain needs, or I will-"

"Roma, stand down." Andrea commanded, only to be faced by an irate look from the battleship.  
" _Stand! Down!_ That's a fucking order!" He bellowed, and Roma reluctantly dissipated the force field. "Not first, and certainly not last lesson about us humans: we don't take kindly to threats," he continued, in a calmer but serious tone, "…sure, we may comply out of fear, but violence and oppression always bred resistance and defiance, all throughout the course of history. Now, please, let me handle the talk…I'll still need you to translate, if you will. Please, Roma." And so the battleship relented, and obeyed.

He told the greeks their true situation, though obviously summirazing the whole thing and leaving out all the details that could not interest his audience, and by the end he kindly asked them for the food: less than Roma originally demanded, but still enough to allow him to live at sea for around a month; he ensured the people that the facilities on board could preserve it, for they did not want it going to waste. Surprisingly, they said that they would retire for some time, consider his demands, and that an answer would be given to him shortly. He was conveying his thanks when his memory stopped recording.

From what Roma told him on his awakening, he suddenly screamed in pain while clutching at his chest, and then he passed out and fell to the ground. Roma immediately scanned him, and what she saw nearly flung her into panic: some of his cells were suddenly _attacking_ some of his tissues, and more importantly his newly transplanted organs!

Fortunately, the urgency of the situation and Roma's skillful choice of words managed to convince Georgios to enlist help in getting him aboard her hull, where Roma led the way into her medical facilities, when she had Andrea put inside his old tank. She then activated a stasis field, so that she could calmly study what was happening to his body and find a solution; to the town's elder, such events were proof enough of Andrea's story, and in a surprise move he asked his countrymen to gather the requested provisions and transfer them aboard the battleship, in a specially designated room which Roma would then modify after the loading was done, to act as a vacuumed storage area.

When during the process she got approached by Georgios, she recoiled in surprise and tensed up; his first impression of the girl was for sure _not_ a positive one, and seen how he and his companions promptly helped when they saw that Andrea, a complete stranger, was in peril, she regretted the way she had treated them.

"I apologize for my behaviour." she said, in a polite manner: "I've only passed two weeks in company of a human now, and until this morning he was unconscious…I have no idea how to treat your kind. For me, you were only the enemy…until Taranto happened. Now nothing is clear anymore, and I _need_ him. I need my captain, and I need him _alive_. And…since you all helped with saving him from mortal danger, I wish to convey my…appreciation…to you, and your people."

She was very surprised when the elder smiled at her: "I believe the word you're looking for is, simply, _thank you._ We need nothing more, because we are humans and we help each other…or at least we should; the world has never been the place men want it to be...but sometimes we remember what it is that makes us humans."

"Thank..you." she said quietly, "Since you said that humans should help each other…is there...something I can do for your people?"  
Her response prompted another smile and a chucke from Georgios, "So you are one of the Fog? I don't think so. You look human and, as far as I'm concerned, you act exactly like one: when we were arguing before, you were aggressive because you didn't want your captain to starve, and when he fell ill the worry I saw on your face was something that a machine could not feel nor express; and now you try to repay us, even though you have no sure way of doing so. Do you know what is indistinguishable from a human, thinks like a human, and acts like a human?"

"A…a human?" Roma answered, unsure.

"Exactly. You are more human than either your captain or yourself may think, and if what he said was the truth and you discovered your humanity just two weeks ago, what you have already done is truly remarkable progress. Still, to answer your question…if you want to repay us, visit us from time to time; scare away some crows for us, and remember that life is precious: it should not be wasted, it should be saved whenever it can be…and not taken without a good reason."

That last phrase left the young girl quite puzzled: did he know what it felt like to take a life? Had he maybe participated in a war in his younger years?  
Such questions remained unresolved, for soon he and the other greeks disembarked leaving her alone on the deck, with a small crowd silently looking at her as she sailed out of the small bay towards the open sea; some were waving, some still had hateful looks in their eyes…but the majority looked just relieved to see her gone.

Still, she shouldn't care: Andrea was still in need of help in her infirmary, and she was determined to have a captain who did _not_ risk dying if let out of a damned stasis field for too long. So she steeled herself and went to work.

* * *

Suddenly, Andrea felt a voice buzzing in his right ear: "Capitano, _would you please come to the bridge? I have something to discuss._ "  
"Why don't you come down here to the bow instead, Roma? Fresh air will only do you good, and thanks to your treatment I no longer have to worry about feeling cold," he tried to argue, but Roma was adamant.

" _Because it regards the bridge. And also regards something important, which I hinted at when we were talking at around 1200 hours today; besides, you should remember what I said about your health just a while ago._ " Defeated, he abandoned his post and started walking along the deck, past the giant 381mm triple forward gun turrets and searching for the hatch that his HUD displayed along the shortest route to the bridge.

"So, you said that I was undergoing _rejection_? Well, it's kind of a common problem to have after a transplant…how did you solve it?" He remembered asking Roma, when he awakened on one of the surgery table after his collapse at the greek village.

"Well…I could not manage to disguise your new tissues and organs as your own, and your immune system would not stop attacking them, so I had no other choice: I programmed some nanomachines to suppress your immune response and injected them into your body, but-"  
"...But..?" Andrea pressed; he didn't like where this was going…

"I ended up neutralizing your immune system…entirely. So, you have now an 'extremely fragile health' problem…I'm sorry." Roma announced in a soft tone, hanging her head.

" _Merda!_ All I needed now was an over-beefed case of AIDS!" Andrea shouted sarcastically, and Roma snorted at the bad joke.  
"Well, it beats being dead…" she remarked.  
"Might I remind you that _you_ are the cause I ended up dead in the first place? …Sorry, I didn't mean to rub it in. Do you have any recommendation, doctor?" He asked in a lowly tone of voice, feeling sorry for having snapped at her like that; she tried her best to get him healed...again. The cost that such a feat came with was not necessarily her fault.

"Well, let me get the bad news out of the way immediately: with no immune system to speak of, you should not get ashore without wearing a sealed environmental suit, which I currently do not possess, so for the moment you are stuck aboard me; plus, since you are bound to introduce _some_ pathogens through at least food and water even while here, you must take regular nanomaterials injections, from two per week to once per day depending on the presence of an infection, and the aggressiveness of the pathogen." Ok, this was seriously _bad_. Andrea was by now bracing for the probable absence of positive traits about having Fog nanomachines running rampant through his bloodstream.

"The good news is that I've fitted you with a neural implant that allows you to control the nanites present in your body, both consciously and unconsciously: functions such as the modelling and programming of the machines that substitute your immune cells are successfully embedded in your subconscious, but you can command the remaining nanites by the use of thought; you should consider testing your control of the nanites...try thinking about donning a new set of clothes, for example."

The following shenanigans, Andrea remembered chuckling while climbing the flights of stairs up to the bridge, included a wrist-mounted flamethrower, an uncontrolled flight through the ship's corridors by means of a jetpack, Roma getting her PTSD shortly triggered by the flames and all the flailing around that Andrea was doing, and dulcis-in-fundo a naked walk of shame back to medical to get the next injection of nanomaterials, seeing how he consumed his previous reserves on useless equipment.

Fortunately, in the following minutes he kept himself under control and now, shortly after sunset, he was walking through the armoured doors of his battleship's bridge, clad in a serious looking green-gray double breasted tunic along with trousers, with tall black leather boots and a black leather belt holding the two pieces of the uniform together; on his shoulders there was a rather strange symbol, formed by a black circle inside which were two, six-pointed stars, the outermost being white and the inner one, again, black.

"Strange choice of uniform, _signore_." Roma commented.  
"I took it straight from my favourite movie series; it's the uniform of the bad guys, but I always thought the Galactic Empire's navy was where I would have fit best, if only its emperor had different policies…but never mind. I will show you Star Wars sometime, it's great and you may even find some ideas for your possible refits. But I believe you had something to tell me, right? By the way, excellent work on modelling the bridge, Roma. Thank you."

Said bridge, while formerly an empty room with the exception of its armoured windows, was now sporting an impressive array of furniture and instruments: at its center, slightly to the rear, was now placed an elongated, futuristic looking armchair on a rounded support, and there were places for consoles of various functions all around it filling the unoccupied space, while at the same time not impeding the paths around them; directly in front of the captain's chair, right before the front windows sat a rather large table, which was now projecting in the air above it a big, holographic map of the southern Mediterranean sea.

As Andrea moved to stand beside Roma next to the map, she eyed him with a confused expression: "I'm afraid I did not understand anything of your last phrase, but your thanks are appreciated," she admitted, "I've put a lot of work on this bridge…I have to admit that your imagination was quite useful to shorten the design process, as was your idea to transmit your mental images directly to me through nanite connection; you made a really good call by deciding to enhance your neural chip to be able to communicate with me at the thought level, although the lenght of connection you can endure is quite short...still, using words would have made your request very difficult to fully understand."

That's when Andrea spotted what seemed a slight blush creeping up the battleship's visage. "Are you…admiring my intellect, by any chance?" he said, with a trollish grin on his face, only for Roma to give him an annoyed glare: "If you are finished spewing nonsense…sir, you _do_ remember how I spoke to you this morning about my shortage of nanomaterials, right? Well, now that you understand _why_ they are such a relevant resource, I have important news. I believe I found a way to solve this problem."


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Sorry for the late upload...I blame World of Warships for this :)**

* * *

 **Chapter 4: Briefing**

Day 02, 07.00 hours, near the eastern coast of the Gulf of Sirte.

Andrea and his wife Laura were making love, and they had been for the last 20 minutes; panting heavily and by now covered in sweat, Andrea let himself be brought down under her. As she moved herself on top, he looked all over her slim, naked body, basking in every sweet detail and slowly moving his eyes up towards her face. He couldn't keep himself from smiling happily as his sight locked on his lover's straight, brunette hair and her eyes, as green as his own, and he sighed in relief.

It was all a dream, a _really bad_ dream, and now Laura was here… _comforting_ him and making sure he would forget everything…everything…everything. Andrea was in bliss: closing his eyes, he could feel her hands going up his torso and locking his shoulders down, as she prepared herself for another round…but her grip felt tight, a little bit _too_ tight.

He opened his eyes to see Laura's taking a creepy red hue, and she was licking her lips as a predator would while anticipating its meal, her mouth parting in a grin of _demented_ proportions. And then she started to laugh. It was not her usual happy, carefree laughter that made her adorable in his eyes; it was a loud, crazed howling which froze every particle of blood in Andrea's veins. He started lifting his torso to try to free himself of her iron grip, but his muscles seemed to ignore his commands! Then, as suddenly as it started, the laughter stopped.

"Laura, what's happening? What are you doing? You're creeping me out…" Andrea asked in desperation, trying to see if maybe he could get her to reason, or if she was by any chance pulling a prank on him. Laura simply smiled at him…but that smile showed _far_ too many sharp canines. "Go~od night, my loooove!" She said, in a creepy sing-a-song tone…before baring all of her fangs and moving to sink them in his throat.

* * *

"Aaaaaahhhhhh!" Andrea screamed, jumping up so hard that he fell off his command chair and he faceplanted on the hard floor of Roma's bridge; heaving and covered in cold sweat, he sat straight on the floor and looked around. Seeing no Laura in full cannibal mode ready to feast on his flesh, he deduced that he was now back in the realm of real life…but there wasn't any avoiding the fact that the heartwarming and exciting scene he lived, before it went all horribly wrong, was just a dream. It wasn't real. His wife hadn't made love to him, and she never will again, because she was _dead_. Slain, as he was himself, by the very ship he now commanded.

Said ship - the mental model, that is - was also on the floor, looking at him with worried eyes: "Captain, are you ok? You gave me quite the scare there…I was trying to wake you up, but then you screamed and pushed me away..! What happened?" she asked, concerned.  
"Fuck off. You interrupted a dream...a very nice dream, that's what happened." Andrea angrily retorted, "So good, in fact, that I wouldn't mind trading it for this reality. And…damnit…!" he broke off, his voice cracking and tears coming out of his eyes.

Roma was at first hurt by his angry reaction: he should have been thanking her for bringing him out of such a worrisome hallucinogenic state, especially when they were nearing their designated AO. But when he started weeping, she knew she probably worsened the problem instead of solving it.  
"I miss her…I miss her so much…Laura…" he sobbed, taking his face into his hands, "Whyyy!? Why couldn't it have been me dying in that forsaken day!? At least I would be at peace…and maybe, just maybe…you…"

He was undergoing a full emotional crisis, and Roma didn't know what to do: _he_ was the one that should know how to deal with emotions, goddamit! She needed Andrea to be combat-ready, and soon, because the likelihood of encountering enemy patrols was getting higher the closer they got to their target area, but her peculiar and unenviable position as his assassin put her in a difficult spot. Using customary human procedures such as hugging and friendly talk would probably be counter-productive...so she chose another option. If she could not comfort him, she had to go in the opposite direction.

"At peace, hmm? Yes, yes, way to go captain…! Be at peace with yourself, die satisfied, with not a care in the world! Leave your wife alone to an unknown future, to fend for both herself and a child, all the while feeling the burden of losing you for the rest of her life. Way to go…I didn't know I had a bloody _codardo_ as a captain." She said, rising to her feet and trying her best to maintain a stern tone of voice and a disapproving look, "Are you so weak that you would dump such a weight on that woman without a second thought? To make her suffer like that just so that _you_ wouldn't have to? I thought that…!"

"... _ENOUGH!_ " Andrea thundered, standing up himself, his eyes seemingly ablaze with anger and locked into Roma's. "You don't know _shit_ about what it means to love. Or to _lose_ someone you care about. I don't want you preaching me about things you don't know, and I certainly _don't want_ to be lectured around by _the one_ single person who _caused all of this fucking merda!_ "

Roma took the rant with not as much as a flinch: she knew he would react like this, and she managed to steel herself…it still hurt a bit, but she knew it was because she had provoked him. More importantly, she succeded.  
"Now _that_ is my _capitano…_ " she smirked, "I apologize for the rude awakening and for my harsh words, but you were clearly having a psychological crisis, and while I normally would never resort to insulting you, unfortunately giving you time to recover is a luxury we don't have. We are entering the target quadrant, and this brings a high possibility of Fog encounters. Besides, I do believe you asked me to wake you up in such a circumstance." She concluded, in a professional tone.

Seeing the reasoning behind Roma's actions, Andrea sighed loudly and interiorized his anger…there will be a moment to vent it, but that moment wasn't now.  
"You're right. Now, if you will, can you please remind me of our objective and what exactly we're likely to encounter today?" he said, taking place near the table and activating the blue holomap, which displayed an area stretching from the eastern Libyan coast near the city of Bengasi to the city of Sirte to the west, with three circular areas marked in red spread through the gulf; some thin red lines connected them with two solid red routes, one leading north-west and the other towards the east.

"Shown here are the approximated positions of three different Fog resource extractors: their function is to, obviously, mine materials from the seafloor and process some of them into the elements found in the equipment we use, like thanatonium, stygium and acheronium, while others that are more useful in their natural state, like iron, are kept unprocessed.  
Those materials are then loaded onto non-sentient cargo ships and sent to our bases across the Mediterranean along the routes shown in red; such ships are also equipped with large refineries and nanoassemblers to allow for the in-voyage production of nanomaterials and ordnance, and usually travel in large convoys escorted by at least one destroyer division. These convoys are our primary target, as they will carry a large amount of resources which are directly usable without the need for more processing, which would require a large amount of time, but we should expect a fight with their escort force, which will try to allow the transports to escape." Roma explained.

Andrea looked at their own position, roughly 40 km northeast of the closest mining rig, and asked:  
"So, what do you suggest? Should we patrol the routes and ambush the convoys, or do we go for the extractors directly? We're pretty close to one of them already, and the northwestern route cuts along our path, so we have both options open…" then he remembered something Roma explained to him the previous evening, and inquired: "…by the way, are you _absolutely sure_ that your comrades think you have been sunk at Taranto along with your escorts?"

"Yes. My localization transponder was completely destroyed by a torpedo which nearly missed my power core, so the only way for the Fog to find us is via direct contact…and I made sure to avoid it, even if it cost me some course deviations last night, while you were sleeping; we nearly ran into detection range of a patrol more than once, but we still have the element of surprise. It will be hard to keep it after our first strike, though." She confirmed.

"Hmm…" Andrea pondered his options: if what she told him about the Fog fleet last night was true, the ships modelled after those of a certain nation tended to operate mainly in what was their historical theatre of operations, during the second world war and that, coupled with the fleet roster she gave him, meant that the eastern Mediterranean would be, at least theoretically, the safest area of operations…maybe, with sufficient materials, he could even set up a base on one of the abandoned islands there; so he fiddled with the holomap for a bit, trying his best to formulate a strategy that made sense and he often ended up asking for Roma's advice, which proved helpful in clearing his many doubts. Finally, he got to a conclusion and drew a route on the map.

"So, here's the plan: we are going to intersect the western convoy route and follow it all the way to the westernmost extractor, which is the most isolated of the three; with a bit of luck, we can hit their long range communication, preventing a call for reinforcements and delaying the news of your return long enough for us to loot it and escape. We will then stalk the routes leaving from the remaining extractors and patrol the big eastern route, looking for cargo convoys. After that, we will assess the situation: if we have managed to acquire a sufficient number of transport ships we will turn north towards the Aegean sea, which no subfleet seems fond of patrolling according to your intel; in the case that our loot is too small and the Fog still ignores our presence, we will attack the other two extractors, and then make our escape."

After Andrea spoke up, Roma analyzed his reasoning to find any possible faults. It was a cautious plan, but she would have totally ignored the extractors…raw materials were not what she needed after all, and those mining rigs were likely to be well guarded.

When she expressed her opinions, Andrea said that he considered such factors but then decided to raid the extractor anyway, because he wanted both to study the applications of those raw materials for possible upgrades and to disrupt the Fog operations in the region as much as he possibly could while keeping the risks to a minimum; the element of surprise opened a unique opportunity to achieve such an objective.  
"Your logic seems sound, captain. _Sono d'accordo_ , I will execute. Continuing on current course, western convoy route intersection should occur in…ten minutes. I would suggest familiarizing yourself with the interface on your command chair before we enter into combat."

"Excellent." Andrea said; then, he let out a big sigh: "I must admit…I am a bit nervous. I have never fought anything or anyone," he confessed, while taking place on the command chair in a semi-reclined position, "…I'm wondering how well I will fare, especially at the controls of a ship. A _real_ ship, not a simulation or a video game.

I hope I won't let you down, or endanger my growing child…oh, by the way, I'm issuing you a directive now. You will make the following order a priority in _any situation_ , and you will be authorized to override my commands if you judge that they jeopardize such directive. The order is the following: the survival and the complete development of my child, both physical and psychological, must be guaranteed at any cost. Even our lives, or that of other human or Fog personnel are secondary compared to this. Did I make myself clear, Roma?" he commanded, directing a determined glare at his ship-girl.

"Understood, commander. Order has been registered and classified as 'Prime Directive'. All other concerns secondary. That said, I believe you will make a fine captain, Andrea. You may lack experience, but I am used to fighting by myself and I can cover you if you make mistakes; survive a few battles, and you will soon develop such experience. I, on the other hand…" Roma's eyes seemed to sadden and her voice took a lower tone.

"I don't know if I will ever develop your emotional control, or your creativity…I feel like I am…limited in how much human I can be: my own body mimics yours but it is still built, not born; I possess protective layers and picoprocessors, not skin and neurons…in the end, I wonder if I am really a living being." She then locked her eyes onto Andrea's, which was listening carefully, and proceeded to ask a question that was haunting her since she acquired her humanity: "Do I have a soul, _Capitano_?"

Andrea did non hesitate a single moment. "Yes, yes you do."  
Roma felt so relieved that she couldn't help but show him a big smile…a smile that dropped when he continued to speak. "That is exactly what makes you a true living being, and what will make you feel _really_ bad when I will order you to shoot somebody. If you were not the one to kill my wife, I would feel sorry for asking you such things, but unfortunately that is not the case. Still, I will try to restrain myself from ordering you to shoot to kill. Maybe others among your kind are waiting to have their hidden humanity unlocked…and we desperately need allies."

While the girl turned around to look out the windows, Andrea pressed a hidden button under his right armrest.

That caused many things to happen simultaneously: the chair was raised from the floor and a system of rings and gears emerged with it and moved into position, stabilizing even the smallest oscillation thanks to the gyroscopic effects. Controls similar to that of a next-gen fighter plane materialized from the nanomaterials on the armrests, with a throttle for each engine on sides of the left one, along with a lever for rudder control on its top side; on the right armrest resided a cloche used for weapons targeting, linked directly to the heads-up-display holographically projected in front of Andrea's eyes. The HUD displayed, among other features, a continuous radar and sonar feed, a shield and hull systems status display, the targeting reticule for all of the ship's weapons and navigational information.

" _Capitano_ ," Roma announced, "we are crossing the route: sensors don't detect any convoy leaving the area, and we need to change course to reach the extractor…would you…want to take the helm?" she asked, in a timid manner. This was surely going to feel _strange_.

"Of course! Turning to new heading…2-0-0, right?" Andrea asked, which prompted a nod from the battleship. He then proceeded to gently grasp the rudder lever and lock it half to port; while the turning circle was relatively large, which was expected, the response time was immediate and it didn't take long before he had to set the rudder back to neutral.

After a short while, the girl gave an announcement which Andrea would remember for the rest of his life: "Contacts. Fog mining rig…5 vessels: 4 destroyer class, 1 light cruiser class. _Ordini, capitano_?" The young man gulped, and sent a silent prayer to one, very specific angel whom he _knew_ was watching him.  
"Engines ahead 3/4. Charge klein shield cells, and bring power core output to combat levels. We are engaging."

* * *

On the deck of another battleship, a tall, blonde girl wearing a dark blue, double-breasted jacket -which felt quite strained at the chest- and white, skin-tight trousers, looked almost like an admiral of the 18th century as she was overlooking a flurry of activity among the ruins of Taranto, a spyglass positioned on her right eye and a black bicorne placed firmly on her head. The construction of the new base was proceeding according to plan, and the mystery regarding the disappearance of the bombardment fleet was going to be finally solved… _after two bloody weeks_. She _needed_ to know what happened! Roma was her second in command, and one of her best battleships. If she had sunk...if the humans had developed a way to fight back, this war would suddenly become much, much longer…

" _Flagship Warspite, it's Vortice. I'd like to report that my mission is successful. I've recovered Oriani's core._ "  
A small sigh of impatience escaped Warspite's lips. "Excellent job, Vortice. We were lucky to recover her before her core started taking damage from the elements. Bring her aboard me, and resume searching while I question her; the wreck of Roma is still missing."


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: I'm sorry. It seems I keep underestimating the time I need to write one of these babies, and I keep posting late. That said, I'd like to thank all of my readers and my reviewers for the attention they are giving to this story. I hope I can keep delivering, and that it will remain interesting throughout time.  
**

* * *

 **Chapter 5: Enemy**

Day 02, 09.00 hours, eastern Gulf of Sirte.

Rogue battleship Roma is approaching Fog mining rig 2-0-6.

"…Preparations are complete. Ship status is combat ready, captain." Roma announced.  
"Excellent. Maintain course and speed…in the meantime, see if you can determine which ships we are facing, and give me a quick rundown of their capabilities." Andrea asked, feeling tense but trying to figure out a plan of attack; the first step towards winning any engagement, he read, was to know both one's enemies and know his own capabilities.

"Scanning enemy forces…done. OPFOR consists of one _Capitani Romani_ class light cruiser and four S _oldati_ class destroyers. Tactical analysis…keeping our distance is recommended: while we have a crushing advantage in both firepower and survivability, we must not allow them to get close enough to score multiple torpedo hits. Their thanatonium warheads are their only chance of overloading my shields, and their average speed is much superior to ours; if things go sideways, we won't be able to outrun them." Roma explained.

Andrea reflected on his options: going along with his ship's suggestion and engaging at range would probably ensure their victory over the small defending force, but either they or the automated extractor would manage to send a distress signal. They needed _time_ to load the raw resources, and the arrival of enemy reinforcements would surely cut short the amount of their loot; even more troubling, there was the chance of said reinforcements being something which they could not outfight nor outrun. He needed a different approach, and thankfully Roma's second scan of the Fog force discovered something really…interesting.

"Sir, I have identified the lead cruiser: it's the _Scipione Africano_." Roma said in a relieved voice.  
"What about her? Did you know her before your mission at Taranto?" Andrea asked, curious.

"Yes. I've run a few missions with her as an escort, and she was a cheerful and curious type: she was always energetic and ready to pounce on a mission whenever it presented itself, and was continuously getting in trouble with me because she wanted to learn more about humanity and the reasons for the war. Plus, every time we engaged a human vessel, she seemed to be…reluctant, or saddened…to shoot. That doesn't mean that she _didn't_ fire, but think she sometimes missed on purpose. I…disagreed with her dangerous views and scolded her for her behaviour in battle, at the time, but she was still an excellent unit. We're lucky to have encountered her now: if ever there is a ship of the Fog which I can reason with, and maybe recruit, it's her."

"Hmm…" Andrea thought while stroking his very short beard, "If you think you can avoid a confrontation, you have my backing, but I want a reserve plan in case the situation goes sideways. Until she turns to our side, _if_ she turns to our side, she and her escorts are still enemies. Is that understood?" he stated, and Roma nodded.

"They have turned on an intercept course, moving towards us at a constant 30 kn speed. Wait…Scipione is hailing me… _on a nanite connection_?" she was surprised: only ships with a mental model were capable of such a form of communication. "Sir, I'll respond to the hail and try to convince her to help us…maybe even share my memories, or let her meet you. With enough luck, we'll trigger the release of _her_ hidden protocols, and we will have our first ally. In the meantime, I will keep in touch with you via text on your HUD: we still need both a way to deal with her escorts and formulate the backup plan." Roma then asked her captain if she could proceed.  
After an affirmative response from Andrea, she closed her eyes and activated the nanite comm channel.

As she opened them back, she found herself in the courtyard of a luxurious roman _Domus_ , which was overlooking a giant corn field. As amazing as the view was, though, the scenery still seemed somewhat… _artificial_.

" _Ciao_ , Roma!" said a happy voice behind her; she turned around and saw… "Scipione? You really got a mental model!? I thought they were still being tested! I..I don't know what to say, you look good!" The girl she saw looked around 16 years old, and was a long legged brunette with a slim body and short straight hair which were kept loose, hugging her neck, even though they weren't long enough to reach its base. She was wearing a strange, desert camouflaged tracksuit with sports shoes, and she was staring at Roma with a happy face and sparkling orange eyes.

" _Si, è fantastico_ , isn't it? Now I look like a human! Wheeeeee!" Scipione giggled while spinning on herself, snatching a laugh from Roma:  
"Ahahah! You are still the same as I left you." Then she turned serious: "Listen to me, and listen _well_. I'm in a _really bad_ situation here."

Back on the battleship's bridge, Andrea was taking turns looking at his seemingly unconscious ship-girl and nervously eyeing his radar screen, where the group of five contacts was coming closer…and closer.  
Suddenly a text message from Roma appeared on his HUD, and he started reading.

"Currently explaining situation. She is listening, and seems receptive. Status as a potential ally confirmed." …a loud sigh escaped his mouth, but any relief he might have felt was replaced by sheer terror as the message continued: "Troubling news. First mediterranean battleship division is escorting a convoy bound for our target extractor, which is soon to enter our AO from the western route. ETA 1.57 hours and counting down. Our presence has not yet been reported, but will be noted if a distress signal is sent."

" _What?!_ No way! Please let me see him! Letmeseehimletmeseehimletmeseehimletme…" Scipione started bouncing up and down in excitement at the news of a human living onto Roma's hull. Said battleship sighed and pinched her nose in annoyance.

"Scipione, for the code's sake, please control yourself! If you want to meet him, I need your help in keeping him alive!" she said, sternly; she needed to get the excited destroyer leader under control, and fast, for the distance separating their ship-bodies was shortening rather quickly.  
"Really? How can I help? Shoot it!" Scipione agreed, still in adrenaline overdose.  
"Good. First, I need you not to give word to _anyone_ of my presence here, including my sisters. Second: tell me about your destroyers…"

* * *

20 minutes later, Roma was docked with the gigantic mining rig: while on the seafloor it looked like an enormous spider, equipped with mining drills on top of the legs and a big, octagonal body housing the power core with four tall pillars connecting it to the surface, the structure was deceptively small above the waterline.

It consisted of a flat, square automated dock surmounted by a pyramidal looking structure, which held inside it almost all of the extractor's main systems, including the storage, the computer core, the communications relay and the cranes which were now loading a battleship, a light cruiser and two destroyers with raw materials. The other two destroyers were currently running a short patrol in the surrounding area, to prevent any interference.

"Seriously, Roma, how did you manage it? This goes beyond my best expectations..!" Andrea asked. He was more than impressed when the battleship proudly announced that he now had the whole group under his command, and he suspected a trap or a double-crossing were soon to come. Still, nothing had happened and now, using Scipione's command codes, they were loading the first part of their loot, while keeping well in mind that they could stay there for one hour at best before getting the hell away; any more time, and they would run the serious risk of being caught by nothing less than a battleship force.

"We were lucky," she answered, " _Corsaro, Legionario, Velite_ and _Mitragliere_ entered service with the Fog fleet in the last two weeks, and were assigned here as a first mission with Scipione as a veteran leader, with orders to obey her commands no matter what that entailed. That said, I still have my doubts; we didn't yet give any of them an order that goes against the basic imprinting of a Fog unit, but that will be unavoidable at some point…and I am worried that they will turn against us then. We should watch Scipione as well, because while she is apparently happy to help us survive, I don't think she will go as far as fighting alongside us, at least until we have...unlocked...her personality from the loyalty to the admiralty code." She concluded.

* * *

After finishing loading the resources, Roma's battlegroup left on a northeastern course, and Scipione activated the extractor self-destruct sequence, on a 30 minute countdown; with luck, it will give the group a good enough diversion to allow them to roam the eastern convoy route, their next target, relatively undisturbed. Suddenly, once they had travelled far enough from the rig for it to be below the horizon, Roma suddenly spoke in a worried tone:  
"Captain, I'm receiving a message from the flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet…it is being broadcast on all Fog frequencies." Andrea, currently looking out the windows of his bridge, turned around to face the girl.  
"Can you patch it through?" he asked, and Roma nodded.

"… _Fog Fleet, I repeat: this is an urgent message for all of the Mediterranean Fog Fleet! Second flagship Roma has undergone a malfunction during her last mission, and her matrix has gone rampant; she is now an extremely dangerous element. Any vessel equipped with a mental model is advised to keep its distance from her own to avoid the possibility of infection, and any other ship which comes into contact with Roma is hereby ordered to sink her on sight! Such order is to also be applied to any compromised Fog personnel. Flagship Warspite out."_

Andrea Ribaldo suddenly felt his blood rushing away from his face.  
" _Capitano_ , the destroyers are powering their cannons!"

He ran to his command chair, screaming: "Get that _cazzo di_ Klein shield _up_! We're in the middle of their formation, if they launch their torpedoes now we are done for!" He just managed to activate his chair controls when 16 energy beams of various colours slammed against the battleship's hull, rocking it and pushing him hard onto his right armrest. "…cough…Damage report!" he demanded.

"I suffered 16 direct laser hits; we have lost some point defence guns, and my armour plating has been scratched. Nothing serious…shield is up!" Roma responded nervously as her Klein field responded to her commands, forming a layer of blood red holographic hexagons over her hull, and then hiding itself from view. Andrea needed to act, and fast, for they were surrounded by two destroyers on each side.

"We need to sink them before they can launch! Think you can do that?" He was now slamming the battleship's rudder full to starboard, applying maximum thrust to the port engines while stalling the starboard ones to make the ship turn faster.  
"Affirmative! I will use the ship's momentum to accelerate targeting procedures! Keep up the evasive maneuvers!" As if in response to her words, the two gigantic front turrets were rotating ominously, their guns elevating a small angle to aim at each of the two destroyers on her right flank.  
"Targets locked, captain!" Roma called; at that, Andrea swiftly ordered. " _FUOCO!_ "

Six 381mm large high-powered laser cannons roared in rage, ejecting six huge crimson beams which bore down on the destroyers with crushing power; their flimsy shields were hopelessly overwhelmed and the beams kept going, carving their way directly into their small hulls before finally releasing their deadly grip.

"Direct hits, captain! Critical damage inflicted on Velite and Legionario! They are taking on water; they are trying to repair the damage, but the strain on their processors is preventing them from firing, at least for now!" Roma reported.  
"Excellent! What about the ones on our port side?" Andrea asked.  
"Rear turret and port side secondary batteries are locked on the Mitragliere, and ready on your command!" Andrea didn't need to be told twice. " _Open fire!_ "

Three more heavy laser beams smashed themselves against Roma's target, this time joined by six others, although a bit smaller. The effect on Mitragliere was devastating: the main guns shots carved through both the Klein field and her hull like it wasn't even there, exiting cleanly on the other side, but it was the 152mm medium lasers of the secondary battery who scored the most devastating hit, striking the torpedo tubes magazines and detonating the thanatonium ordnance stored there; the resulting explosion ate away at the hull of the ship like an hungry beast, splitting it in two and completely erasing her middle section from existence.

In the mean time Scipione was trying to evade Corsaro's dumbfire torpedoes, while desperately trying to order her to stop; unfortunately, with the way Warspite's orders were formulated, she was also to be sunk along with Roma, and Corsaro did not respond to her anymore. Reluctantly she opened up on Corsaro with her eight light, but rapid-firing laser guns, peppering the destroyer's shields with golden energy beams but failing to bring it down; still, if she continued like this, she might be able to subdue her overzealous charge without sinking her…she hoped. But what she also failed to notice was the stray heavy torpedo that was about to cross her path…until it was too late.

" _Aaaahhh!_ " Scipione's scream brought Roma back from the trance she fell into while watching Mitragliere explode.  
" _Merda_! Scipione, what happened?" she cried, hoping for an answer which, after a while, came:  
" _Urrgh…I..I'm ok! I got hit and my shield held, but it's in critical condition! I don't think I can survive another hit like that!_ " Hearing her, Roma felt relief…and also discovered a new emotion. One that made her feel like her lungs were burning. One that wanted to see the destroyer that dared to hurt Scipione being torn apart and slip beneath the waves…forever.

"Captain, permission to sink the Corsaro?" she growled.  
"Granted. Take her down." And down she took her. Bringing her whole broadside to bear, the sheer amount of firepower unleashed on the destroyer was such that when she was finished, only the presence of a thick, gray cloud of nanomaterials could suggest that there was a destroyer there. Somehow, this felt… _satisfying_ , to Roma.

After making sure that Scipione was still combat-ready, she and Roma approached the two remaining Soldati class, which were still trying to stop their flooding.  
"Captain, requesting permission to board the enemy vessels to retrieve their Union cores. I will leave mine here, so that in case something happens to me I will still have my ship functionality."

Andrea was a bit surprised by the request: "Is it really so important to do such a thing? It seems like an unnecessary risk to me, especially now that every Fog ship in the Mediterranean is hostile, and I _really_ don't want us to be caught with our pants down."  
"With… _what_ exactly down?" Roma asked, confused.  
"Never mind, it's just a figure of speech, it means being caught with our guard down." Andrea patiently explained.

"Ohh…now I understand. Still, it is as important to us as saving survivors from a sinking ship is to humans. Our union cores are our…black boxes, if you wish to call them as such: our ship bodies can be sunk and our mental models killed, but as long as the core is intact we still live and can be reconstructed."

After getting Andrea's approval, she and Scipione boarded the sinking destroyers and recovered their cores, bringing them aboard their ship-bodies before scuttling the wrecks with a few shots. They then resumed their course eastbound at maximum possible speed (which was 45 kn, Roma's limit, even if Scipione could reach 63) and scanning the area.

The jumpy light cruiser had previously told Roma that she knew of a big convoy that was to leave the area that day, but before they could patrol the route it was supposed to go through, they had to make a detour and approach it from the north. That was to avoid any ship that could have detached from the convoy to investigate the explosion of the extractor they raided, since the self-destruct sequence they had started had surely been executed by now. By the time they reached the route, the convoy was at the extreme range of their sensors, but they had found it: 18 slow, precious cargo ships…and the diversion had worked flawlessly.

The convoy was _completely unescorted:_ it was every raider's wet dream.

What they couldn't see were that the convoy _wasn't_ unescorted.  
Three predators were hiding underwater in the convoy's trail, and they were lying in wait, patiently biding their time to spring the trap.  
The rogue ships would soon experiment the cold embrace of the abyss.

"Oh, this will be quite a feast..." one of them thought while licking her lips in anticipation, with her torpedo tubes flooded...and aimed at the Roma.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6: Ambush**

Day 02, 15.00 Hours, 87 km north of the submerged city of Bengasi, Libya.

Rogue Fog ships Roma and Scipione africano on pursuit of target convoy.

Battleship Roma and cruiser Scipione were once again on alert.  
After a long chase, the two ships had managed to reach the fleeing cargo convoy and would soon enter communication range: when that happened, the plan was to broadcast Scipione's command codes (apparently, the destroyers that attacked them before did so in a hurry, without reporting that she was compromised, as both of the rogue ships had not detected any outbound call from them) taking over the entire group at a moment's notice, saving time that would otherwise be needed to hack their command prompts; such procedure required that the mental models board the ships they wanted to capture, and that was a difficult maneuver which would leave the ships vulnerable in case of enemy presence or the arrival of reinforcements.

"Comandante, _we're about to enter broadcast range; should we start the operation immediately?_ " Scipione asked Andrea, perched from the main mast of her ship form.  
"Negative, Silvia. Wait until we can cover all of the target ships simultaneously, we don't want any warship noticing that something has happened to the convoy until we can't possibly avoid it." He responded.  
" _Aye, sir! Maintaining pursuit!_ " She excitedly answered.

Over the last hour, Andrea had spoken via wavecomm with an excited Scipione, which after the recent battle could not contain her curiosity and asked him a very many questions about pretty much anything that was human related.  
The young man tried his best to answer, since there wasn't really anything else to do to pass the time...but had to veto some questions related to his family, which he wasn't still ready to speak about, or certain...parts of the human body which purpose Scipione could not understand by herself. Of all the things he could picture himself doing in his new life, giving "The Talk" to a machine-spirit-girl for lack of better terminology _was_ _not_ among them.

Speaking of said parts, Andrea was actually surprised to discover that Scipione's body was female (or looked and sounded as such; he certainly did NOT want to take her pants off to verify it). If what Roma told him was true, models were female only because humans referred as such to their historic counterpart, but Scipione was a _male_ name; heck, even the word " _incrociatore_ ", referring to her ship class, was male.

He would have liked to investigate the issue in more detail, but he first wanted to choose a new name for her (or his? Such confusion!) model. Addressing her(?) as a male sounded strange to him, and Scipione was an unwieldy name anyway; after a bit of bickering and even more questions of the kind that Andrea had to deviously dodge with promise of a future explanation, they settled on "Silvia".

Andrea was amazed that a still "locked" fog ship could exhibit such an amount of personality...but maybe, he reasoned, the mere fact of having a human form could soften even a machine. No, scratch that: Roma said herself that before Taranto, she was as cold and emotionless as any computer...he seriously hoped that Silvia's cheerful personality and enthusiastic curiosity were not fake, a mask put on by the ship just to deceive them and lead them into a trap.

Leaving his thoughts to themselves for a while, he looked at Roma who was standing beside him on the bridge, and noticed that she had a strange look in her eyes. "Hey, what's wrong?" he inquired.  
"Something's amiss. By now the convoy's escorts should have come back, after discovering that the extractor was a ruse...or they should have been relieved by another force, if they couldn't catch the convoy anymore. We should proceed with caution." She explained.

"Hmm...try to divert as much processing power as you can to the sensors. I can take over navigation and some other functions if you want, and.." Andrea said, sitting back on his command chair and activating its controls, "…I'd very much like to avoid any nasty surprises."

" _Sir, we're in range of the lead vessel, should I begin transmission now?_ " Silvia reported.  
"Go ahead. You have green light for the takeover, repeat, you have green light for the takeover."

After he gave the order, Andrea could see Silvia from his HUD: standing on a single foot on top of the main mast, with golden holograms surrounding her, she was executing his command whilst doing some poses, without the slightest hint of being in trouble or about to fall down. He was so captivated by the tremendous physical ability and balance she had to possess to do something like that, that when Roma issued a panicked warning he jumped on his chair.

"Captain, I've got thanatonium readings! We have torpedoes incoming from all sides!"  
"Shit! Raise shields and start evasive maneuvers! Where the hell did they come from?" Andrea sweared.  
"Shields at maximum strength and point defense are online, captain, but we must protect Silvia while she is transmitting! Her shield has not yet fully recharged!" Roma reported. "Six signatures are coming in from bearings 000, 090 and 270; pattern suggests an ambush by a submarine wolfpack!"

In the meantime her p.d. systems, consisting of a pulsed laser version of her old AA battery, turned to point at seemingly random patches of sea and started blazing away, trying to intercept the deadly missiles.  
"Missed!…correcting for refraction and dispersion effects…" Roma murmured, continuing to fire, and then... "Got them!" she shouted victoriously, as four ominous spherical explosions went off a discrete distance from Silvia's hull. "The remaining two warheads have changed course and are bearing down on us! Brace for impact!"

Andrea tensed up as he held himself steady on his armchair. The ship was rocked by two blows, one each from starboard and port, with a loud and unpleasant sizzling sound.  
"Damage report! Are we alright?" he called.  
"No hull or systems damage. Klein field integrity is down to 70%...these had to be low yield torpedoes." The girl said, before Andrea asked:  
"How do you know that?"  
"That model sacrifices firepower for a guidance system: the only way to stop them is to shoot them. High yield torpedoes, on the other hand, are unguided, but their warhead is capable of bringing my shields down by 35% on a single hit…or cause catastrophic damage to my hull." She explained.

"Wouldn't want to get hit by one of those…" Andrea thought aloud. "Roma, do we have any way to counter these submarines? We cannot get pinned down here evading and shooting torps all day, and if we try to run they might shadow us and push us towards a bigger force; plus, we _need_ those transports!" At this request, the shipgirl started elaborating a strategy, only to be cut by a transmission from Silvia:  
" _Commander, the transports are under our control! What are your orders?…wait, I see thanatonium signatures closing fast!_ "

Andrea saw himself that on his sensor screen were now five…six…twelve or more red arrows moving rapidly from multiple directions towards the center…and they were bigger than before.

"High yield barrage! _Dobbiamo schivarle_! Evade, Silvia, evade!" Roma shouted. Andrea immediately turned the ship manually towards one of the three torpedo salvos, bringing the engines to full power to try to avoid the tightening maw of death, while the point defense system blazed away to intercept the closest ones; after too many long and tense seconds, it seemed they had emerged unscathed…then they heard an explosion, and a pained scream.

* * *

Silvia had been hit, badly so. Her klein field had been overloaded and a good chunk of her middle section, from little above the waterline downward, was completely missing: twisted metallic struts were protruding from the gash in the hull, and there was crackling black lightning coming out from the open sections which was desperately being fought back by a wall of gold hexagons. " _Critical damage…singularity core exposed…catastrophic..containment..failure…_ " Silvia transmitted, breathing erratically, " _…suggest…keeping a safe distance…can't prolong emergency measures for more than…three minutes_.." Then she went silent.

"Silvia! ...Silviaa! ...Captain, I'm going to get her!" Roma stated in a hurry, moving to leave the bridge.  
"No you are not! I don't want to leave her to die as much as you do, but we don't have a choice here!" Andrea countered seriously, looking at the projected radius of the explosion on his HUD, "If you don't make it, we are going to explode with her! Remember the Prime Directive I gave you!"

"I DO remember it! That's why I offered to try to save her! We need allies, and three minutes are more than enough for me, if…if I focus my power on my human form, I can do it! You...will have full control over my ship body, and I know it is a lot to handle for a human, but…please…Let. Me. Try!" She asked, tears forming behind her eyes.

A few seconds later, Roma the girl was running towards Scipione on a very shaky holographic walkway, while Roma the ship kept sailing forward at a low speed.  
On the bridge, Andrea was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of commands that suddenly appeared: other that the joystick for weapon controls, the throttles (and rudder) for navigation, and the basic HUD info, there was now a plethora of weapon selectors, targeting commands, power regulators, and more buttons that he was able to count; and that did not include the various holographic screens now displayed at an arm's reach 360 degrees all around him.

" _…And how the hell am I supposed to control all of this!?_ "

He looked around searching for Roma's sensor array screen, which he found after a while, thinking of a way to find the sea-camping motherfuckers who ambushed them.  
Turns out, he needn't have bothered: a strange pyramid of blue energy beams formed between something akin to a strange drone, up in the air, and three points under the sea, in such a way that Silvia's hull was surrounded; smaller beams were bouncing from side to side, giving consistency to the slowly shrinking geometrical figure.  
Andrea had no clue what would happen if something was caught by that energy net, but he had to act fast if he didn't want to find out to Silvia's detriment.

Looking again at the sensor feed, he noted that the four vertices of the pyramid were highlighted: if he was lucky, that thing was being projected directly by the submarines...and they had just given away their position. Looking around again at the various new commands, he found something that put a dementially huge grin on his face.

* * *

After boarding Silvia's listing hull, Roma had to search the whole length of the ship relying almost only on her human senses: Silvia's body was flung away from the mast by the explosion, and her Fog scanners were rendered next to useless by the interference from the core breach. She ran and ran, until she finally found her…lying on the bow, with her left leg severed by a fallen gun mount and her face twisted in an agonized expression, heaving and crying. Strangely, though, there was no blood to be seen anywhere.

"I got you Silvia! You won't die today!" Roma grunted, while picking up the fallen model and slinging her on her shoulder. Then she concentrated her energy, preparing to spawn her walkway again, but was interrupted by a thought message from Silvia; it showed her Legionario's core, stored away on her bridge...which appeared still intact.

Redirecting her already channeled energy, Roma covered the distance that separated her from the bridge in a single jump; while she was descending she spawned a blade of energy from her foot and kicked the structure, which blew open on impact. ..What? There was no time for subtleties, and the ship was going to sink anyway! Still, she looked around and immediately found what she was looking for: a small, ovoidal grey object, with a fog mark upon it. She grabbed it and run through the small hole she made in the bridge, jumping down to the deck and preparing to go...nowhere.

A Fog energy net was sprung around the ship to prevent her escape. Even if by some miracle she were to survive the collapse of Scipione's core, the net was going to eventually shrink, cutting them in many many tiny pieces. And that's when she saw her ship hull exploding.

Correction, it wasn't exploding: Andrea had apparently fired _all_ of her 55 missile silos _at once_ , and she could see missiles going _everywhere:_ some were flying around in the air seemingly without a target, and a lot of them just nosed down after a short time and impacted the water in a very disorganized manner...what was he doing... _  
_Then her desperation turned into relief as she saw 10 of the missiles impacting the regulator drone in the sky above her, reducing it to scrap and destabilizing the net, which completely dissipated; without wasting time, she charged her energy, and _RAN_. _  
_

Andrea was now suffering the consequences of his reckless thinking in the form of complete deafness. He couldn't imagine that just launching a salvo of missiles could make _that much noise_! "Well...there were 55..." He thought aloud, without hearing himself. "At least that stupid pyramid is gone; I hope Roma makes it out all right..."

Looking at the sensors, he could see that the missiles which had impacted the water were now apparently in search mode: their trajectory was changing continously, and some were plunging straight down to the bottom, but the majority of them soon began to converge on something...closer...and closer...and then he saw an impact. Then a second. And a third. Then more, and more, until he could see the sensors identifying what were now the hulks of two Fog submarines: two Flutto class, the Gorgo and the Tritone.

Unfortunately, the missiles that were to have zeroed in on a third target had now lost it, but he was distracted from his hunt by Roma, who thundered into the bridge while screaming something that he couldn't hear; immediately after, she regained control of her systems and the ship boosted away at 45 knots.

* * *

Fog submarine _Leonardo da Vinci_ was _furious_ : she and her subordinates had performed _flawlessly_! They had mortally wounded the rogue cruiser _and_ disconnected the battleship from her mental model, rendering it effectively harmless, and _then_ they managed to trap _both of them_ onto an exploding singularity core! What the hell happened to turn such a well-executed trap into a disaster?

Now her companions were both sinking and she had barely managed to escape by feinting a crash dive, then launching her countermeasures while activating the emergency surfacing procedure...she couldn't care less about the casualties, but to see such a magnificent plan ruined...she would have cried, if she could. Then she discovered exactly _where_ she had surfaced...and she found another reason to cry.

Scipione's destruction was chill-inducing: finally breaking the desperate efforts to contain its power, the micro black hole that gave energy to the ship started pulling the rest of the vessel and the sea towards it with tremendous force, twisting, shrinking and atomizing the metal, and sucking enormous quantities of water and air like an hungry maw, before collapsing on itself and vanishing into nothingness.  
Scipione's hull was completely gone...as would have Silvia, Roma and Legionario, were they still on board.

"It's my turn to be amazed now, _capitano_! I have no idea how you did it, but I'm really glad that you managed to flush out and take care of those three submarines...oh, and thanks for getting rid of that energy net! I thought we would have all perished..." Roma said, covered in sweat and trembling from physical exertion.

Obviously, Andrea heard nothing of this praise, and continued to look at the horizon with a stunned expression; noticing this, Roma briefly opened a nanite link with him to let him know by thought what she felt and what she wanted to convey, at which point he reacted: "Thank you, but I don't think it's over yet...I nailed two of them, but I think the third escaped."  
He sighed, before reclining his chair and resting his eyes for a moment. Things were only going to get harder...and he indeed needed all the rest he could have.

Roma apparently knew otherwise though, because after ordering the cargo covoy to go northeast along a route that she and Andrea had agreed on before, she changed course towards the explosion site. The reason consisted in the front half of a Marconi class submarine, which was quickly slipping beneath the waves...and specifically in the unconscious female, clad in a heavy coat, floating gently on the calming waters near the sinking wreckage.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Sorry for being a week late guys, I have absolutely no excuse...other than my own laziness, my uncertainty on how to handle some things in this chapter, and my unfortunate decision to resume my suspended campaign on Total War:Warhammer. Yes, I'm a big nerdy type of person. Still, I wanted to close the "first mission" story arc with this chapter, but it proved too troublesome. I should be able to do that with chapter 8, after which I plan to slooow my upload pace for a time. Gotta brace myself, for FINALS ARE COMING, and I want my damn degree. Goodnight from Italy, folks.**

* * *

 **Chapter 7: Unlocked**

Day 02, 22.00 Hours, open sea. Estimated position: 196 kilometers southwest of the island of Crete.

Andrea was on the bow of his ship, observing the darkness all around him: with the faint light of the moon and the deep red reflections of his battleship's fog marks giving color to the blackened sea, he could barely see the outlines of the transports they captured proceeding in a tight column behind them, in a clear night where the water was calm and the breeze was refreshing. After the heat of the lybian coast and the action of the previous day, he found the scenery to be quite soothing.

"So, how did you like your dinner?" He asked, turning around to face the black-haired girl who was sitting cross-legged on top of the closest of her main guns.  
"Honestly, I don't know what I'm supposed to say: although food should not give me nourishment as it does for you, I think the taste of it was nice, and I felt a strange sensation of...being filled. I find it...satisfying." She answered with a small smile.

"You don't say? You ate thrice my share!" Andrea laughed. "That much fried fish in one evening would be more than enough to give a regular human some _serious_ digestion problems! Maybe you should start eating something once in a while...think about it, your body might be able to process the food after all! I can see no other reason for you to have such an appetite!" He smiled, seeing the reddening effect that his remarks caused on Roma's cheeks. He then started thinking about what happened earlier in the evening.

After the ambush, he had ordered Roma to deactivate the Fog transponders on the transports, to avoid them being tracked by the enemy, and then they started cruising at around 20 knots (the maximum speed of the cargos) towards the Aegean Sea, which was the one with the less reported Fog presence. Luckily they hadn't encountered any patrols, and they had a clear run for the whole evening, allowing them to have a meal undisturbed: the dinner itself was nothing special, just some fried fish and salad with a side dish of cheese; what was curious though, was the way it was prepared.

Andrea had asked Roma the day before to install a conveyor network around the ship to allow him to get any kind of object he may need in the future, even if just a glass of water, in whichever room he was. Since such a thing was highly inefficient she connected just the food preserving room, the water storage and her material cargo hold to the bridge and the medical bay, but she supplemented the small network with "Item manipulation devices #538" in the last two rooms: that fog denomination corresponded to a strange "oven", which nanomachines could be controlled with one's mind to have numerous effects, from heating to cutting and mixing; it was basically a mix between a fabricator and a kitchen multitool, since it still required the presence of materials and ingredients brought via conveyor to function.

Thankfully, nanite communication with the device was less strenuous on Andrea's brain than the one with a mental model, allowing him to give accurate instructions to the machine which he decided to name, quite plainly, Replicator. After a few tries he managed to prepare dinner and save the procedure in the replicator's database: such a function would come in handy the next time he wanted the same dish.

Returning to present time, Andrea remembered the one issue that they still needed to address today: "So, shall we go greet our guests?" He said, motioning to go inside.  
Roma uncrossed her legs and gracefully jumped down from the cannon, walking with him towards the superstructure ad then deep inside the ship, inside the armoured citadel and into the medical bay, where two mental models awaited constrained on the surgery tables, which were now inclined to allow eye contact while maintaining distance.

* * *

"Hey! Finally…I thought you would leave me here forever!" Silvia said, pouting a little but quickly recovering her upbeat personality. She then unleashed a flurry of questions upon her poor hosts: "…I couldn't even free myself, somehow all of my functions were blocked! Thanks for restoring my leg, by the way! Oooh, are you Captain Andrea?! …and who's the sleeping beauty on the other table?"  
"Urghh…Scipione, will you _please_ calm down a little? Just for once?" Roma pleaded with a loud sigh, while Andrea chuckled.

"Well, it's nice to finally meet you in person, Silvia. Hopefully we can start a good partnership together, and you're welcome for your leg: after all, we'd like our allies to be at their maximum affordable strength." He said with a polite smile while starting to walk around the room, keeping his arms crossed behind him, "Yeah, allies…this brings me to the reason for which we are here, and for which I had Roma limit both your motor functions and your control over your nanites. Loyalty, and allegiance." He continued, stopping in the field of view of the brunette model.

"You have shown me that you are willing to aid someone which you consider your friend, and later also to be willing to defend your existence, even in defiance of your flagship's orders. That shows both a hint of altruism and self-preservation instinct, which are not typical to find in a machine; so I will ask you a _very serious_ question." His face suddenly hardened in a cold façade, his eyes fixed on the lively model's.

"Do you wish to aid me and Roma in our quest for survival and resistance against the Fleet of Fog, to help the human people whenever possible, and to follow my commands…even if it means destroying an old comrade?"Silvia appeared confused at the sudden seriousness of the situation, and she stayed quiet for a whole minute, elaborating.  
In the end, she agreed with a short nod, although she didn't appear very convinced of her decision; she seemed almost…sad.

"Traitor!" shouted the mental model laid on the second table, which until now appeared inactive.  
Andrea turned her attention to the voice's source: a short girl with long, light gray, straight hair which would reach her shoulders if she was standing. Her looks placed her at the same apparent age as Silvia, 16 to 17 years old, but she had a totally different appearance: where Scipione was lightly tanned and had a soft, if lively face, her lineaments were hard and her complexion pale, though not as much as Roma's.  
Her big, curve nose combined with her eyes who were painted a fiery yellow gave her visage a predatory appearance, like that of a bird of prey looking for its next victim.

She was wearing a long, form-fitting black coat which covered her completely from her arms down to her knees, without showing anything underneath; it wouldn't have looked too out of place in the early XVII century, and it sported a red cape covering her shoulders. She was also wearing some elaborate brown sandals at her feet, which were bare like her legs. On the table, next to her head, was a red renaissance soft hat.

" _Bene, bene_ …it seems our other esteemed guest has awoken. Tell me, do you know where you are, and what this means for you… _Leonardo da Vinci_?" Andrea asked, while he pondered what to do with her. He had plans for her, but they all relied on a... _risky_ procedure.  
The record of her historic counterpart was impressive, to say the least: with 120.243 total tonnage of ship kills, she was the best-scoring submarine of the entire second world war…excluding the germans, of course, but they were _the_ submarine specialists of their time; still, if her ability was somehow replicated in the fog vessel he now faced, she could prove to be a valuable asset…if she could be turned. And what the hell was up with ships named as _males_ having _female_ mental models?

"Hrmpf! I have nothing to say to you, other than calling you all fools not only for savingme from sinking, but also repairing my mental model. All it will ever get you to is having to restrain me." She scoffed, without bothering to turn her head to face Andrea.

When Roma brought her aboard, Leonardo's model was so badly injured that Andrea couldn't even discern its _gender_ : her entire body was cleanly cut from her left knee up to her right shoulder in a precise line with the lower half completely missing, and the other half was so charred that her coat fused with the body; her white core could be seen in the folds of her flesh where it had been split, and the model itself was slowly disintegrating into particles of silver sand. Still, as with Silvia's wounds, there was no blood spilling from the broken body. Restoring it had been a…taxing enterprise for Roma, and a considerable investment of the newly gained nanomaterials which required a risky en-route transfer from a cargo, so Andrea was determined to have his way.

"Well, I believe you have received as well the orders from your flagship. All the models who come into contact with Roma are to be considered compromised and sank on sight, but why? Allow me to enlighten you…" He said, moving beside Leonardo's table to be able to look her in the eyes. "…during the butchery at Taranto, Roma experienced a particularly _traumatic_ experience after being exposed to contact with the blood of her most recent kill…yours truly."

At this, the grey-haired girl's eyes widened in stupor and quickly narrowed, wary. Seeing her reaction, Andrea smirked wickedly and beckoned for Roma to come near him, while he dematerialized the sleeves of his uniform.  
"If you are wondering how and why such an experience turned Roma against the Fog, wonder no longer…for you are about to experience the same."

Leonardo watched paralyzed as Roma connected a pair of small, transparent tubules from Andrea's right arm to her own…and stared in mute horror at the bright red liquid that was quickly covering the distance in between. Closer…and closer…she braced herself, preparing for a pain that never came.  
The blood was pouring inside her by now, but nothing happened. After a few seconds Roma disconnected the tubes, and Andrea re-materialized his sleeves; whatever they tried, it did not work on her! ...But her victorious smirk was quick to disappear.

Andrea watched as the submarine girl's features were twisting in a flurry of emotions: surprise, confusion, fear, and then utter panic as she shifted her face to look around her, like she was trying to escape something. Then she started blabbering incoherently, louder and louder, and then she started sobbing.  
Then the screams began, and oh boy did she have a nice pair of lungs! She screamed, on and on she screamed, in fear, and in pain…until Andrea could not take it anymore: "Roma, would you please deactivate her vocal chords? Her screams are becoming quite disturbing."

"No need, captain. Whatever illusion she is seeing, it's probably impeding her capacity to breathe." Looking at the girl, Andrea noted that she was indeed choking…on nothing.  
"Did you have a similar reaction to it, Roma?" Andrea asked, curious.  
"Up to this point, yes. I don't remember choking, but I heard voices and had visions that were literally driving me mad: it was under their influence that I first turned my guns against the Fog, and it took me a whole week to confine them in a single memory bank…they are still there right now, quarantined. I don't think…SHIT!" she shouted.

"What's happening?" Andrea asked, as Roma recalled an holographic interface and started fumbling with it.  
"She is trying to initiate a core purge! If she succeeds…" She explained, looking at Leonardo's model: her eyes were wide, staring into nothing, and her body was unnaturally rigid. "If she succeeds…she is dead. For real. No memory, no personality, no nothing. Gone."  
"Then stop her! No one takes the easy way out, not on my watch!" Andrea sharply commanded, before noticing a quiet sobbing; turning to face its source, he was faced with a weeping Silvia who was looking at the dying model, tears falling in rivers from her brown eyes.

"Is this…is this what is locked away from us? Those _'E-Emotional p-protocols'_ that R-Roma was explaining to me this morning? A-are they r-really so t-terrible that she wants to d-d-die? H-how can this be? ...Will I...will...I...have...to...?" Her voice broke before she could finish the last question, but Andrea understood and his expression softened a bit.

"Yes. This is the power of human emotions, which your body possess, but that is not needed in a machine…a weapon. It is a curse, as you can plainly see: we humans can suffer to a great length physically, but even more psychologically…our minds can be even easier to break than our bodies. Do not despair, however, for our world is not just anger and sadness…there is so much more. And trust me, it is beautiful. It may be a curse, but this power will make you much more than a living weapon. It will make you a living being."  
By the time Andrea finished his monologue, Roma had deactivated her holo-panels.

"I stopped the purge in time. She will make it, but her systems are currently rebooting: it will make it easier for her to assimilate the new protocols into herself, and maybe she will reacquire some semblance of sanity. She should wake in around…10 hours." She reported.

"Good! Really nice save there, Roma. If I may ask, what did she see to cause her such a trauma? I can understand that what happened to you was related to the bombardment that you undertook, but there's no such scene right here and now that would justify her reaction…" Andrea asked, thoughtful: the one they used was the only procedure he and Roma had devised to unlock the protocols of eventual Fog captives, and the more they understood the process, the better.

"Her mind was brought back to a _particularly_ bloody mission she undertook. You should ask _her_ , when she wakes up. I…I think THAT is private information. And also that speaking with her about it will help her recover at least part of the mental health she has just lost." She frowned, displeased by what seemed a sick interest.

"I would also like you to know that I don't like the use of this method. What if someone else tries to suicide and I'm not there to stop her? Or what if someone, in her madness, cuts loose from my restraints?! A Battleship or a Suppression Vessel would be fully capable of doing that, and your precious child would be in grave danger!" She stated, with a bitter tone.  
She thought that humans were supposed to feel empathy, but he looked at Leonardo's suffering just like herself once looked upon her victims, before her own unlocking. What's worse, he almost seemed to _enjoy_ seeing her suffer, and she did _not_ like that.

"Then we will find another way, but until we do, we are stuck with this! And…you are right: this needs to be done _far away_ from the medbay." Andrea conceded. "I'm sorry, I did not ask you the details, but I _need_ to know what she and I will be talking about: I highly doubt her first phrases are going to be coherent…and what is a suppression vessel?"  
"Your kind calls them Aircraft Carriers." Roma briefly answered. "Urgh…I don't like it, but I can see your point. I will send you an infrared image of the ship that she sank…the name is on the bow. Prepare for instant nano-comm."

As she shared the submarine's memory frame with her captain, his eyes widened: "My God…the _Divina_. She torpedoed the _Divina_ …" He slumped to the floor. He was shocked, but now he could understand the submarine's reaction. "The news spoke about it for weeks…it was the night we humans truly understood how cruel the Fog could be to our kind: a cruise ship, 5.468 souls aboard. Disappeared...without a trace...in open seas, while returning from Cyprus. No survivor, or body, was ever found."

"H-how t-terrible…" Silvia whispered. At that, Andrea slowly rose up and got close to the brunette.  
"Well, now it's time to see how much you really care, Silvia." He quietly stated, looking at the fragile-looking girl.  
"I-I'm afraid…D-do y-you r-really have t-to...do...it? " she whimpered, and Andrea's heart clenched. But after using his own nanites to produce a handkerchief and wipe the tears from Silvia's face, he steadied himself: there was no other choice. So he gave the order. "Roma…start the procedure."

Silvia resumed weeping as soon as he uttered the damning words, and kept at it until his blood was fully transferred. Then it intensified, as she rocked her head back and forth, violently, and then she started screaming too. First it were just unintelligible words, then screams of pain, and then a single, final cry:  
"NO! You don't understand! I'm sorry! I'M SORRY! I DID NOT WANT THIS TO HAPPEN! I NEVER WANTED THIS TO HAPPEN!"

This time Andrea could not look on coldly, but he kept looking. He had to keep looking. He knew that if his prisoners and allies were to experience a hell they themselves created, he would still be the one to give the order, and send them there. He needed to watch, because it was his own hell to endure, and he was certain that someday this would be haunting _him_ during his sleep. He never in his life could stomach the screams of a woman, even in movies: they made his blood chill and his belly turn inside out in guilt, and they flayed his heart with sharp blades of voice that caused incredible pain. These were no exceptions. He tried to ignore the grey-haired girl's cries, and he thought he managed to endure them, but it was not true. Silvia's were the final straw, and a single tear escaped his eye. No, he had to find another way to do this; he was not strong enough.

Finally the cries stopped, and a loud, constant sobbing took their place.  
Not being able to stay put anymore, Andrea moved to Silvia's side and unbuckled her restraints; she fell right onto him, her weight bringing him to his knees.  
He caught her and hugged her tight. "Ssshhhh…It's over…we are here with you…it is all gonna be ok...it's over..." Then he started weeping, silently.

As Roma saw Silvia hugging him back in desperation, and the tears of guilt that Andrea was shedding, she thought that maybe she misjudged her captain…or maybe he is more complex and unknown to her than she would dare to admit. Maybe she still not understood completely what it meant to be human. Only time would tell.  
Now, Silvia was undoubtedly with them, she saved a life and she was restocked on both nanomaterials and...food. She smiled: maybe this was the beginning of happiness.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: I'm Baaaaaaaaaaack!  
**

 **Edit: Unfortunately i did not manage to publish as lengthy a note as i wanted to this morning, due to life getting in the way...as it did for the whole past month. I apologize profusely to all of my readers: I said that i wanted to close the "First mission" arc of the story, and yet i made you wait over a month.  
So, finally, allow me to announce the End of the first (and shortest, you could say introductory) Arc. The longest chapter yet, with 4500 words.**

 **I would also like to take advantage of the occasion to (at last) answer my reviewers! Yay...! I loved to read your comments, but haven't shown my appreciation yet. So, let's begin.**

 **A Big "Thank You" to Dark 7 Thunder, NicodemusV, and for the compliments you gave me. I hope i can keep providing you with as much entertainment as i can, and keep your interest up!**

 **Cab00seHelpsU: The ending of the story is far, faaar away...so far that even i have actually no idea what it will be! I guess we will all wait and see what will happen. Ha! You wished for action, and action has happened: i'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts about it, if you're still around. About WoWs, you will be surprised to hear that i actually do not have the Warspite; i chose her as the flagship of the Fog Mediterranean fleet exclusively** **for historic reasons. Oh, well...if you like the New Mexico so much, you should go and read my secondary story: the first chapter is all about her sister Mississippi. Thank you for reading, I hope to see you here again soon!**

 **Unknown Guest: The question of the gender of the mental models has haunted me and will keep haunting me for quite a while. Italian ships as well should, for the majority, be male: Leonardo da Vinci and Scipione Africano are prime examples of that. For the moment, i chose to go with females because any vessel can be referred to as a "Ship" (which is a universally female or neutral word, for what i know) and...you know. They're girls, and i have a big weakness for the "girl and ship" duo! Still, i have in mind one or two ways to address this, but i won't say what they are in order to avoid eventual spoilers.  
Thank you for reading and for your review, it was greatly appreciated. Until next time..!**

 **Old steamer: I...personally tend to dislike supernatural stuff, at least in a universe where technology is the main focus; i know that the "unlocking" by blood contact is a bit far fetched, but i prefer to find cool (if unplausible) technological explanation to stuff. I may cover blood unlocking in the next chapter even, we shall see. I will tell you this: one of your suggestions gave me a good idea for a "repair and rearm" mechanic that Roma could use in the future. As before, it will be explainable by technology, but you will immediately recognize the supernatural creature that inspired it. Thank you for reading and for sharing your opinion with me. Stay tuned!**

 **RedTitanAlpha: You have been so constant in giving me comments that I have gotten to the point of anxiously expecting your PMs after every new chapter. I would like to thank you for this, because there was no better way to know for sure that there was at least someone who would have liked to see the story grow...at least in the beginning. If i have gotten a little bit more confident now, is also thanks to you.**

 **And to all of my readers, both old and new, thank you all for staying with me and my story. I'm happy to see people reading it, and i hope i can keep you all interested. As always, comments are appreciated, reviews even more, and constructive criticism is welcome!  
That said, i leave you to the chapter. Until next time, _saluti_ to everyone from beautiful Italia!**

* * *

 **Chapter 8: Rampancy**

Day 03, 08.30 hours, Aegean Sea. Rogue convoy is converging on possible refuge and base site.

On board of battleship Roma, all was quiet: both Andrea and Silvia could be found on their favorite spots of the ship, on the bow and on top of the main mast respectively, while Roma herself was lying on the roof of her B turret, admiring the shimmering sea and listening to the quiet morning breeze. She sighed. It had been a long night.

The psychological damage inflicted on Silvia by the unlocking procedure was _extensive_ : after what seemed an entire hour, she managed to stop crying and shivering in Andrea's arms and she told him, painfully slowly, of her own ghosts and her own vision.

She, much like Roma, was confronted in her mind by the memories of the battles she participated in, like she was an incorporeal observer on the human side. That made sure she could see in vivid detail the effects of her own actions: muffled cries of help, as sailors on flooded decks tried in vane to escape vessels that would soon be their tomb; and the deafening roar of flames so high and loud, she could hardly see the screaming oil rig workers, horribly immolated to the last man.

 _Hundreds_ had died, by her hand alone.

Such an experience awoke feelings that she tried to conjure before (with limited success) in her interest and curiosity towards humanity, only this time they were the real deal...and they were hurting so much it was unbearable. Like Roma's and Leonardo's before her, Silvia's processors were overloaded and generated chaos in her mind.  
Voices began to sing inside her, with more adding to the choir with each death she saw, and they sang a song so sad it remained burned in her mind even when the visions dissolved into reality. The cheerful Scipione was no more. How could she be...how could she ever be again.

It was only thanks to Andrea's and Roma's combined effort that Silvia avoided descending into a dangerous spiral of depression, and came to terms with her own sins...for the moment. It took around four hours of discussions, tears, and hugs in the middle of the night, but Silvia's sanity was saved and Andrea could finally get some sleep. He was so tired that he didn't even bother to get to his reclined chair on the ship's bridge: he very calmly flattened the inclined surgical table on which Scipione was bound before, laid himself onto it and proceeded to pass out straight until morning came.

* * *

He still looked pretty plastered as he exited the superstructure and took a walk on the battleship's forward deck: "Good morning, Andrea. How was your sleep?"  
The zombified captain looked up at the voice only to find the sun itself burning its image into his retinas: "Shit...I feel ok enough...I think. Except for a very stiff neck, a dry throat and right now new permanent eye damage, but anyway, Silvia, thanks for asking." He said, yawning.

"...and apparently you should also add hearing deficiency and the first stage of dementia. _You_ should be able to recognize _me_ , especially after spending these few days together..." replied his raven haired battleship, extracting a fit of giggles from the nearby Scipione with which she was conversing.

"I didn't know you were capable of joking, Roma!" Andrea yawned, squinting his eyes and looking up again, this time with a hand raised to protect them from the sun. He managed to distinguish the forms of Roma and Silvia sitting on the second main turret.

"I don't know what you are talking about, I was serious." She deadpanned, but then her expression broke in a smirk. "But I am pleased to know that my first attempt at humor is a success. Oh, captain, on a more serious note: I have been monitoring the situation while you were asleep, and we have almost reached your set destination. No Fog patrols have been detected, and all the transports are accounted for. We seem to have been particularly lucky with this trip." She concluded.  
"I'm gonna climb up and meditate a little!" Silvia informed, before jumping in a perfectly calibrated trajectory to perch herself on the ship's mast.

"Luck...luck is a very fickle thing. I don't like to rely on luck, for in my life it always backstabbed me when I needed it the most...but yeah, we were _fortunati_ here."  
Andrea sighed, before walking towards the ship's prow.  
"When Leonardo wakes up, will you be able to handle her problems and give her the first helping hand? I'm not sure I am in the condition to do so just yet, and I don't want to give an half-assed first impression. Please?" He asked, leaning on the railing.

"Hmmm...all right. I will inform you once she is stable enough to meet you. Oh, and commander?" She asked, interrupting herself.  
"Yes, Roma?" Andrea inqured.  
"Thanks for making Silvia smile. She needed it badly...she had been sad ever since her unlocking." At this, Andrea smiled gently and shrugged.  
"I did nothing. It was _your_ joke that made her smile. The credit is yours here." He said, keeping his smile, and Roma felt a little boost to her pride.  
As she stretched herself on the turret, Roma didn't know just how literally she would soon be giving Leonardo da Vinci a "Helping hand"...

* * *

A light-grey haired girl jolted awake, struggling to catch her breath as she looked down at her hands. She was back there again...and after drowning again for the 'shelostthebloodycount'th time she was getting tired of that place. _Fanculo!_ She had been _soo_ close to escaping this cursed ship, and after many, many attempts she believed to have found a way out. But she had to act fast, and so she jumped out of the king-sized bed in the extra-luxury suite of the MSC Divina, running towards the exit door (which wasn't so easy to identify; she lost precious seconds the first time getting lost inside the rooms that composed the suite) and barging in the corridor as fast as her long red dress would allow, only to trip and fall.

" _Merda!_ " She hissed, before removing her shoes and tearing open the lower part of the dress. High heels and running did not mix well, and she needed her legs to be as free as possible.

Sprinting as fast as she could down the corridor and down the first ramp of stairs, she kept going until she found the ballroom; there she slowed her pace, for this part was critical: if she ran across the room pushing people around she would be tackled by the security, but if she went too slow she would soon be engulfed by a panicking crowd.  
So Leonardo walked at a fast pace toward the door on the other side, trying to avoid any unwanted attention. "Excuse me, _signorina_! Miss, a word please!" Shouted a suited bumper, walking towards her. She froze, and he reached her in no time.

"I beg your pardon, but you're not allowed to enter the ballroom in this state. You're not conforming to the dress code required, so I must ask you to exit." He stated.  
"I'm truly sorry, I ran into an unfortunate _incidente_ and tore my dress. I was just going to my room to get a change, if you would allow me to leave." She replied, feigning displeasure.  
"I understand. Please, tell me which exit is the nearest to your room so that I may escort you out." At this phrase, Leonardo pointed to a door on the far side of the room.  
"Follow me, please" said the bumper, quickly walking to the door she indicated and making way for her. Excellent, this would surely save time!  
As she exited the ballroom she began to sprint again; she needed to get to the front of the ship quickly, before- FWOOOOO-BOOOOM!

An explosion rocked the ship, and the cruise liner began to slowly list to port; Leonardo was pushed forward a couple of meters, landing hard on the pavement and rolling to a stop at the end of the corridor, just before a flight of stairs. As people started to understand what was going on and went panicking and running around the ship like headless chickens, she pushed herself up and started sprinting down these stairs, stopping when a large corridor appeared within view.  
At its end was her objective, the panoramic restaurant; unfortunately for her, there was also a crowd of terrified passengers moving in her direction.

FWOOO-FZZZZFZ...BOOOOOM!

The second explosion increased the rate at which the ship was listing, and the crowd was all pushed to Leonardo's left; how she managed to steady herself was a mystery for her as well, but she did not care. Time was running out, and she bolted towards the enormous room in front of her, at the end of the corridor; strangely the ship's inclination did not seem to affect her, and some of the passengers in the crowd could swear to have seen small, silvery exagons glueing her feet to the floor as she sprinted.

Finally arriving in the restaurant room, panting from fatigue, Leonardo looked around and saw a big, jagged opening in the giant window which spanned the entire width of the cruise ship. It must've taken something _big_ smashing through it...it was a bit convenient, but she wasn't one to complain: she quickly put her back to the nearest wall and turned to face the opening. Now, if she remembered correctly, she needed to time the next part well...

FWOOO-FZZZZFTZZZ...BO-BOOOOOM!

The third detonation was her cue to move. The bone chilling sound of the doomed cruiser liner getting torn apart could be heard along the entire length of the hull, as Leonardo leaped through the hole and slid down the front of the ship, her path illuminated by the full moon and the few functioning ship lights, taking care to jump the occasional balcony and the giant bridge.

The sinking of the Divina was a paralyzing sight: three corrosion warheads had impacted the giant cruise ship exactly in the same spot amidships, vaporizing the steel which they found and leaving a keel that was missing an entire lower section from port to starboard, and was now being split in two by the pouring seawater with the rear section listing 70 degrees to port and already half submerged. The steel was groaning ominously and breaking along the line that connected it to the front half of the ship, but it was still being pulled down, albeit slowly.

With an impressive crack, the rear section finally separated and started her final, unplanned voyage to the seabed, becoming a grim metal tomb for thousands of innocent people. The front of the vessel was left completely vertical, the prow briefly raised in defiance of her destiny, with a girl in red perched on its top...before it began to capsize. The girl started a desperate run along the keel hoping to stay on top of the massive wreck, until its deck splashed on the water and she was flung in the air.

Leonardo watched her handiwork from the top of her hull's tower. A textbook execution of her orders: "Destroy the human civilian vessel with the highest possible loss of life." She did not know the meaning, the reason of her orders. She did not know what role those orders took in the Admiralty Code's grand plan. She didn't need to. She was a warship. She followed orders, she sailed, she killed. Nothing else.

...Why, then, was she _so_ drawn to get closer to the sinking wreck? _Someone_ was on that ship... _someone_ that needed to die more than others.

* * *

Leonardo impacted the water _hard_. If she was human the impact would have surely killed her but, she now remembered, she wasn't human; she was a submarine of the Fog. More, she was the one responsible for this hecatomb...and as she stood up from the water and locked her eyes on her other self, who was looking at her from a surfaced submarine hull form, a fire burned inside her. A fire so bright and so powerful that she could physically feel it empowering her. Cleansing her. Consuming her.

"Logical. It is so obvious...why else would I have a model at this point in time?"  
!Leonardo said, reasoning aloud. "If only that battleship hadn't interfered the first time, we would have both been purged, and the Fog would be safe...No matter. I'll finish the job now, and then I will try to purge myself again. And again. I will not be turned. Since you are me, and we are one, I am certain you will understand...and comply."  
She said, as her facial expression became more and more apathetic, before igniting two grey, opaque energy blades.

Hearing her alter ego's words, Leonardo's rage intensified to the point of physically engulfing her in silver flames. She raised her right arm at her duplicate, her fist closed and her eyes focused: immediately the flames turned into hundreds of sharp, solid crystals of energy which ominously oriented themselves towards the evil twin.

She opened her palm, and the swarm propelled itself towards !Leonardo, which leaped in the air and avoided it easily. With no change in her mask-like expression, she adjusted her course mid-air and charged Leonardo...only to be struck in the back by a rain of shards of crystallized fury, telepathically guided to their target by her own one.  
In pain, she let out a gurgled cry as she slammed roughly on the water, with chromed sand slowly coming out of her many wounds.

"I refuse you." Leonardo seethed, walking to her twin and pushing her arm downwards. The shards started pushing into the open gashes in her alter ego's body, causing a new gurgled scream to come out, as the wrecked nanomaterials clogged her airways, "I refuse our name, for it will forever be linked to this. And I am not the one who did it." Another push, another gurgle. "I have been changed. I have been reborn. I am Leonardo da Vinci NO LONGER."

With a final push, the crystals powered their way through !Leonardo's body, exiting on the other side and wrecking every vital point they passed through, all the while causing a massive bleedout of nanomaterials. The extent of her wounds was such that she was left unable to even scream or move, or so Leonardo thought.

As the girl in red slumped on the water, almost fainting for the stress and the fatigue of her escape and the exertion of controlling the crystal swarm, she could see her enemy slowly and painfully rising from the water. Her vision blurred as she saw her executioner approaching her, crawling on her four then stabilizing herself on her knees, with her arms raised high above her. Tears of fear, rage and frustration started to slid down her cheeks. It can't end this way! Not after all her efforts, not just after she was born!

But her body did not answer her call. She was betrayed by herself...and now she would be killed, by herself.  
!Leonardo spawned a small grey energy blade, and prepared to decapitate her "human" counterpart content, as to her own words, to succumb to her wounds afterwards.  
All shall be as it always had been, inside the Fog. So she stroke.

Only for a crimson energy blade to appear from thin air and block her swing, foiling her. "Oh...I've...failed..."

Deprived of all remaining strength, with her nanomaterials not enough anymore to sustain any vital function, !Leonardo died upon the twin she swore to destroy.

Her body decomposed in grey and silver sand, and the few functional nanomachines moved to get inside the submarine's remaining model. Revitalized enough to gain basic movements, she turned her head towards her savior, and saw only a blade and a naked arm, exiting from a crimson hexagon. Then, she fainted.

* * *

Anf...anf...anf...!

Roma was panting heavily, sitting on the floor of the medical bay just in front of Leonardo, which was still bound to the surgical table.  
"Flagship...second flagship Roma? What is the meaning of this? What happened to you?" she inquired, seeing the other girl in such a disarray.  
"You...should...be...the one...to tell...me!" The battleship answered, "Do you...know...how difficult...it was to force my way inside of that simulation?"

"Wait...so the red blade that saved me was yours? How..? How did you infiltrate the scenario? I had been trying to escape it for a long time, only to fail and being forced at its start over and over...before I met that _other_ me." Asked Leonardo, her face morphing in disgust at the memory "...and how did you know which one of us to help?"

Roma took a while to answer, recovering from her own exertion. Then she stood, and proceeded to remove the girl's restraints.  
"Brute force. I used...brute force. The processing power of a battleship is not to be underestimated." She smirked a little, as the bounds were unlocked and Leonardo stepped down on the floor, carefully massaging her wrists and adjusting her clothes. She looked around until she found her hat, and she immediately put it on.  
"Even then, I was only able to manifest for the briefest of moments, and I managed to get through just my hand and forearm; I was able to observe what happened though, from the second torpedo impact onwards. I would have acted sooner, but the defensive encryption of your core was very tough...I didn't expect that from a submarine."

The battleship's praise put a smile on the other girl's face: "I designed it myself, soon after I...got a mental model." Just as quickly, the smile disappeared. "I have done terrible things. I kind of feel...serene, I guess, now that the other... _despicable_...part of me is dead by my own hand, but..." she lowered her eyes and slowly shook her head.

"But you feel that no matter what you did, or what you will do, nothing will ever be enough to atone for your past actions and the suffering you've caused...am I right?"  
A rustle of silver hair hid a small nod. "Take solace in this: now you are no longer purely a machine. You are able to _understand_. And you are able to feel emotions and empathy as I do, as Scipione does, as the humans always did. My captain...says that all of this is what makes you truly alive. Your life will never be the same from now on, Leonardo."

"I don't know how that is supposed to make me feel better..." said the submarine, bitterly. "I know already that I've changed, I have _killed_ my machine self, remember? I just wish I could reverse time and stop myself from firing!" she cried, tearing up, "Oh, and...please don't call me Leonardo anymore. I feel like that name is no longer my own."

"Then we will just have to find you a new name!" Andrea said entering the medbay, still in his imperial uniform. "Roma, would you mind telling me what happened, for you to be in such distress when you called me a minute ago? She seems conscious enough to me..." He inquired, raising an eyebrow.

"I believe _she_ would be able to provide a better insight about it all...I only had a quick intervention in an...internal problem of hers. Leo- damn!" Roma stuttered, almost calling the girl by her old name. "This is my _capitano_ , Andrea Ribaldo. I will share with you all that I know about him very soon via nanite communication, but just now you should know that he is capable of handling it almost like we do: just remember to use small transmission bursts, his brain has a limit to what it can process in a short amount of time."

"What!? Nanocomm? How is this possible?" She exclaimed, astonished. "Wait...I remember you! Your...your blood...caused my creation!" If she was surprised before, now she went to a whole another level: her eyes went wide and her jaw dropped for a second, while her tone of voice lowered in reverence to almost a whisper.  
"I-I will be forever indebted to you. What will you have of me... _father?_ " She asked, kneeling down in front of him.

It was now Andrea's turn to be left aghast. A Fog submarine, who butchered _thousands_ of people and was now, from what he overheard, seeking redemption...was on her knees before him, believing _him_ to be her creator, and calling him her _padre_? He barely restrained himself from giving in to anger. "I...am missing something here. Why do _you_ , a Fog vessel of all things existing, believe yourself to be my _daughter_ , when the only blood of my blood is gestating in that tank over there?" He asked, with a voice colder than ice.

The reply shook the girl a little: "O-oh...true, I should explain myself. I only hope you will accept me, as a daughter...or as a subordinate. Establishing nanite link in 3..2..1..!"

* * *

"...so let me get this straight, Loriana: your character got split in two by psychological trauma, and then it was locked in a simulation programmed to 'kill' both of your personalities; then it would repeat itself until one of them could personally eliminate the other?" Andrea asked the silver haired submarine, while they were walking with Roma in the ship's corridors: Scipione had sighted land straight ahead, which meant that they were closing in on their destination.

" _Esatto, capitano._ The simulation was created because the purge of my systems could not be completed, thanks to Roma's actions, and as a result there was a conflict for the control of the core between me and my...machine self. The purge itself was initiated by the old Leonardo when she detected the division in her psyche, born of the intense trauma that the absorption of your blood caused in her: my old personality preferred suicide to potentially turning against the Fog."  
Loriana explained, "Thanks to Roma interfering again, I won the confrontation and lived on, with this body. I'm deeply indebted to you both." She stated, lowering her head.

"Hmm...I understand. What eludes me, though, is this: are you a completely new vessel, or do you retain some traits of the old Leonardo?" Andrea inquired, curious.  
"It's kind of difficult to explain...I am Leonardo, but I am not. I have her memories, her experience and her skills, but at the same time my sense of self is completely different; I feel like I have started existing the moment you injected your blood into her, instead of having no memory of my birth like a Fog ship normally does. I have a kind of behaviour that would be entirely incompatible with my old self, and...I don't know. I just don't think I'm Leonardo anymore." Loriana reflected.

Andrea thought heavily on what she said, and couldn't find any anomaly in her reasoning nor her feelings, at least confronting them with his previous experiences with Roma and Silvia. He sighed: "I understand. Leonardo is dead, and I have no grudges with your current self, Loriana. Nor will I question your loyalty. But-" he interrupted, stopping himself before the open bulkhead to the forward deck and placing his hands on her shoulders, while Roma went on ahead of them -"Please...don't call me father. You know my own story, Roma must have shared her memories with you. I...I am not ready to accept a mental model of the Fog as my own daughter, neither foster _no_ _r_ real."  
Hearing this, tears started to fall down Loriana's cheeks. "Maybe, one day, I will be able to accept your feelings. I may even be proud of calling you my _figlia_. Alas, that moment is not now." he said, keeping his hands on her and pulling her into a hug.

"I have one thing to ask you though." he told her, while she was still crying into Andrea's shoulder, "If you really feel this way...will you help me in protecting my child? The one who may become your future little brother, or little sister? Will you, Loriana?" suddenly he felt her responding to his hug, squeezing him tightly.  
"Y-yes...I will...*gulp*...captain." She then separated, dried her remaining tears, and once she composed herself they got outside, under the morning sun.

Silvia was deeply in conversation with Roma, when she noticed Andrea and Loriana walking towards them. And immediately her eyes locked on the submarine.  
"S-sc-scipione...I'm sorry for s-s-sinking you befo-" Loriana started, stuttering, before Silvia made an ample cutting motion with her arm.  
"Apology accepted. Roma told me everything." the brunette said shaking her head, before Loriana could blurt out apologies like a machine gun.  
"You are not who you were anymore, and I hope we can work well together...welcome to the crew, Loriana." She smiled briefly, taking her hand to shake it.

"What place is that, Andrea? Is it our destination?" Roma asked, pointing to the large island in front of them which was by now occupying a significant portion of the horizon.

Instead of answering, Andrea started to recite: "A powerful city once rose over the waves: her people were the masters of the sea, her ships were the fastest and the most powerful; her technology was so advanced and her palaces so mighty that all the other cities of man paled in comparison. But then the gods of the city grew jealous of her prosperity, for this home of mortals rivaled their own residences. Such arrogance could not stand, and the gods plunged the city into the depths of the sea, where it would lie for all eternity. The name of the city was...Atlantis." After a brief pause, he resumed.

"Some people say that this is just a legend, that such a city never existed. Others say that the ruins of Atlantis lie somewhere in the ocean that took her name, beyond Hercules's pillars, Gibraltar. Others, again, say that the city was destroyed by a massive volcanic eruption, which was so powerful to sink almost the entire island on which Atlantis was built, which was identified as possibly being the island of Thera. Also called Santorini...the island that now lies in front of us."

Andrea turned around, smirking at the three mental models behind him.

"Ladies, how do you feel about giving new life to an old legend?"


	9. Chapter 8,5

**A/N:**

 **Alright, I said I was back, but then exams happened. Then summer happened. Then exams happened again.  
I hope that THIS time, I will be able to fulfill my goal of one chapter every 10 days (more or less).  
** **Aaaand of course I cannot forget my reviewers!** **  
**

 **Old Steamer: I's a famous creature...but that particular "upgrade" won't be here for a while. All I can say, unfortunately, is: Patience.**

 **UNSC Know Your Place: Thanks for Enjoying the story so far, I'm very happy that you found it interesting. I will try my best to keep the balance, and avoid people (and ships) getting too much OP. I have a feeling that if I ever fall into that trap you will let me know. Regarding romance...it's a bit too soon to think about it just yet, but in the future? Who knows...after all, what are we humans without love and affection and feelings? That's right...machines.**

 **Anonymous: Am I making you worry? :P ...Hold your horses, this story isn't dead!**

 **I had fun writing this one; reviewing it and polishing it? A bit less.**  
 **Okay, okay, I'll stop rambling now. Enjoy!**

* * *

 **Chapter 8.5: OPFOR Interceptions, log 1**

The next night, location unknown.

Warspite, flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet of Fog, was at anchor out of a scorched, ruined city.  
She remembered the day the Fog took it, almost a year ago by now. She did not care for the destruction of the buildings, nor for the suffering of its organic inhabitants. Hell, for that matter she did not care about the different colors the sky took during the arc of the day, nor for what had become her only quirk. Namely, Astronomy.

Coincidentally, the annihilation of the human city and its surrounding settlements had taken away any form of heavy light pollution from the island, which since its capture housed the headquarters of the Mediterranean Fleet of Fog. That had given her a good view of the constellations without the need to sortie to open sea, so now she could note her findings with the comfort of a fixed frame of reference. Well, relatively fixed considering the various planetary movements, but it was as fixed as she could get.  
She did not know when or how that insidious bug got inside her system, but now she couldn't help but observe the stars every night with her spyglass, noting her observations and data in her memory banks. Of course, that was when she wasn't occupied in a mission or managing the fleet under her command, which required her full attention most of her time.

"Hmm...note: object 8472, date 466 days from activation gamma, observation time 03.23.51: luminosity of object increased to the point of masking nearby objects - at time 03.24.43 luminosity decreased to negligible level. Object faded." She said, an holographic recording window at work while she kept gazing at one specific point in the night sky, holding her spyglass with her right hand while her left one ran along its length, turning two wheels and inserting an additional lens on a support just ahead of the objective.

"...switching to infrared-ultraviolet spectrum of vision confirms the absence of radiation emitting from its previous position; the graviton scope reads traces of a powerful gravitational wave, plus a continuous faint emission of particles. Comparison of data with human astronomical database matches the description of the 'supernova' transition phenomenon, which outcome results in a cosmic singularity. Conclusion: re-classify object 8472 as 'Black Hole'. End of note."

The recording window minimized itself and flew into her left forearm, while she closed her spyglass and attached it to a shoulder strap before securing it over her back, being careful to avoid entangling it with her golden epaulette. Despite its old and simple appearance, it was a truly remarkable piece of Fog technology; only its wooden shell with gold bands reminded of its 18th century origin. It fit well with the rest of her uniform, and neither its original master nor the antiques collector whose house held it until almost a year before, would need it anymore.

Warspite took a long breath, then she started to climb down her mast, jumped off and landed on top of her wide and imposing command tower; the small crow's nest she placed on the highest point of her ship form was great for astronomical observation...but not so great to avoid accidental damage to one's model while said model was focusing on intercontinental communication, though.

She adjusted her jacket and checked her white trousers for stains, then she combed her blonde hair and placed her bicorne on the ground next to her. If Yamato had any peculiarities they would be formality and politeness, and Warspite knew well that speaking to a superior with her hat on was _definitely_ not a good way to convey respect to said superior. Finally ready, she closed her eyes and readied herself for the incoming call.

* * *

Opening her lids back, Warspite found herself in an old, Sengoku-era castle: the massive body of the fortress towered over her, partially hidden by terraced stone walls and a big wooden gatehouse. Looking around she could see that she was not outside of the castle walls, for the grassy courtyard she was in was surrounded by white battlements. Walking to the closest and looking outside she could see a rocky waterfall under the wall, falling down for a great height before disappearing in a thick, dark forest.

The sound of shouting and steel clashing suddenly drew her attention back to the center of the courtyard, where two samurai were dueling: one sported white armor and used a two-handed _nodachi_ in a controlled, fast style with an impressive grace and coordination; the other was donning black armor and was dual wielding, with a _nodachi_ in one hand and a reverse-held _katana_ in the other. In contrast to the white samurai, the black one moved around a lot, using a combination of fast power strikes and footwork, though not with any less grace.  
It was like watching two dancers, not two warriors. Warspite was hypnotized by their movements, and slowly walked closer to have a better look. Unfortunately, that got her noticed: the white samurai jumped backward and held the palm of her left hand towards the adversary.

" _Yamero!_ " Shouted a deep, feminine voice. At this, the black warrior looked at Warspite and both lowered their guard, sheathed their weapons, and moved to greet her. Soon the same voice spoke again: "I apologize for the reception, Warspite-san. I told Musashi-neesan here that there wasn't time to spar before our talk, but she insisted."

"F-flagship Yamato?! Musashi-sama...?" Warspite exclaimed, bowing slightly in respect.  
"I'm sorry...I'm just surprised, I was expecting voicecomm, not a simulation...it's strange of you to have produced models, since I reported that they still needed to be perfected. As I recall, you were always very cautious with experimental technology."

Warspite looked up at the two super battleships, which had closed the distance and removed their helms, and even her level-headed and logical mind couldn't _NOT_ be in awe. Yamato's and Musashi's models were the very definition of imposing: both looked like women in their late twenties, wore menacing and sturdy armor, and both were at least two meters tall...even more, if one saw them with their horned and masked helms.

With those removed, their looks were as different as the color of their armor: Yamato had snowy skin, sharp features and ice blue eyes, which shared their color with her hair gathered in a long ponytail; they shone in a mesmerizing pattern, changing their hues along the whims of the simulated sunlight. When the light hit her eyes, the reflection was so clear and so bright that keeping eye contact was next to impossible.

Musashi on the other hand sported neck long hair the color of a moonless night, which framed a face softer than her sister's with whom she shared the distinct Japanese facial features. Her eyes, though, were literally fiery: flames could be seen dancing inside her pupils, if one was brave enough to stare into them.  
Warspite was brought out of her trance when Musashi spoke.

"Ara, she seems curious, onee-sama...and a bit confused." She said, with a smirk and a teasing tone. Her voice was as feminine as Yamato's, but of a lighter tune. "Perhaps we should explain ourselves, hmm?"

"There is nothing to explain. It was my assessment that the prototype models potential in strategic and tactical thinking far outweighed the risks involved, so I produced some for me and my sisters." Yamato almost deadpanned. Hearing this, the british ship's curiosity spoke for her.

"Your sisters? So...Shinano also has one? And...is she here too? I'd like to- _whhaaaaaaaa_!" Warspite's shriek was caused by a loud whistling arrow embedding itself in the ground right next to her, making her jump in fright.

" _Woooooo! Nice shot, nee-chan!_ " Musashi cried, looking at the central body of the castle where a lonely figure with a bow could be discerned, standing on the roof.

Yamato sighed with irritation.  
"As you can deduce, she's here as well. I thought she disconnected, but apparently she got back in during my sparring with Musashi...and she's in pranking mode. Warspite-san, I understand that human capacity for focus and attention are limited, but I thought you did a better job on those prototypes. I should have detected her intrusion."  
After addressing Warspite, Yamato looked towards her sisters.

" _Musashi! Shinano!_ " She bellowed, "Exit the simulation, _now_. I have already given you your orders, so execute them. _Fog no kantai no tame ni!_ "  
At this, Musashi turned around and stood at attention, and the figure on the roof of the castle could be seen stiffening; with a shout of "Hai!" both disconnected.

Yamato inhaled deeply, closed her eyes, and in a infinitesimal amount of time transitioned into a traditional white kimono with a blue flower motif, her hair now in a beautiful and complex haircut tied with two long, golden pins. She exhaled, and her expression softened; a small smile appeared on her lips.  
"Much better. I apologize for the brutish reception, Warspite-san." Yamato said, bowing slightly. "Now, will you please accompany me inside the inner court?"

"Certainly, flagship." Warspite answered, and moved to Yamato's side as she walked towards the gatehouse of the innermost wall.

* * *

Silence reigned for a bit as they passed through the gate, and then into a beautiful garden full of diverse flowers and exotic plants. There were also some _sakura_ trees, but they were not blossoming. Yamato stopped under one of them, which stood right next to the battlements; so close in fact, that they could hear the rumble of the waterfall a few meters below them.

"Beautiful, isn't it? I wasn't able to appreciate such things as...aesthetics, before getting this body. This is for sure an unintended side effect, I know, but as long as it does not interfere with our mission and our abilities...it's far from unpleasant." Yamato said in a low, contemplating voice, kneeling to admire a nearby sunflower.  
"The colors of the land, the perfume of flowers, the roar of water...as well as the intricate movements and the precision of swordfight. It is all so...relaxing, and graceful."

"I know that...sensation. I feel it every time I look at the stars in the night sky, their movements and patterns, their colors and brightness...it is...soothing."  
Warspite answered, and a small smile appeared on Yamato's lips. Which promptly disappeared when she noticed the other battleship's expression slowly changing from dreamy to nervous.

With a sigh, she stood up in all her height and composed herself.  
"I called you not just for admiring my simulation, however. I have orders for you...but I see that something is disturbing you. Tell me what it is, flagship."

"Those that you are experiencing are not the _only_ side effects of those bodies...I have discovered one that is _far_ more dangerous to us all..." Warspite started, hesitant.

"Continue."

"As you know my second flagship, Roma, was the absolute first ship of the Fog to receive a model: we required a ship with high processing power, but we could not risk a flagship for this test. After 3 months of flawless operations, I authorized limited diffusion of the models on all classes of ships belonging to the Mediterranean fleet. Currently 45% of my fleet has adopted the technology."

Silence answered the battleship's words. Silence, and Yamato's intrigued gaze.

"18 days ago, contact was lost with Roma and her escorts during an harvesting mission in the city of Taranto, in southern Italy. I thought she was destroyed, that the humans had suddenly developed a weapon capable of harming us...but two weeks later, we recovered the core of a destroyer from the seabed next to the coast; what she showed me from her recordings of the operation was...troubling."

Warspite was hesitant to continue; Yamato's expression had gradually passed from composed, to inquisitive, to icy. "What happened to her?" She asked.

"Apparently, after the mission was successfully completed, Roma decided to disembark with her model to kill eventual survivors: during this cleanup, her core systems went completely haywire...she attacked and sunk her escorts, permanently destroying a heavy cruiser and one of her destroyer escorts.  
After the incident, she disconnected from the joint tactical network and went rogue. She reappeared three days ago, and since then she attacked and destroyed one mobile extraction rig, and sunk or possibly infected a light cruiser and four destroyers.  
Her whereabouts were last reported yesterday by a submarine wolfpack, which was standing guard to a convoy of transports and refinery ships...I have not received news ever since." Warspite concluded, nervously. Then she looked at Yamato.

She immediately wished she hadn't.

A cold chill went down her spine as the flagship's icy glare froze her in place: her face was calm and collected, and her voice silent. But her blue eyes were speaking. Speaking of a cold, barely controlled anger. The sensation was unpleasant in the extreme for Warspite, and when the Supreme Flagship of the Fog opened her mouth, from it escaped not words, but sharp whispers.

"Well, that is unfortunate. I hope you will find the cause of this malfunction, and its remedy. Soon. If you will not..."

Yamato then slowly turned around and walked to the nearby battlement, looking at the panorama that was outside the walls.  
"The human nations are trying to pool together their naval forces scattered around the world in three big oceanic fleets...the fools want to face us in open battle."  
She announced, her voice returned to normal.

"This was not going to be a problem until a minute ago, for I have not been entirely honest with you before.  
I have been...carelessly impatient to see the benefits of the Mental Model Porject in battle, and I have not granted them only to myself and my sisters; I also gifted them to some of the more...proficient members of the fleets.  
If my, and I presume yours as well, hypothesis that contact with the enemy is the trigger for the models...issues is correct, that deprives the Fleet of Fog of a quarter of its global firepower. So I will need to make some adjustments on the plan for the incoming battles."

Warspite slowly felt the tension leave her body, and gathered enough courage to speak again. "What are my orders, Supreme Flagship?"

"Your orders are to group together all the ships that have mental models, and bring them to your headquarters at Malta to keep them safe from human contact.  
Furthermore, for the purpose of the operation i just told you about, you shall temporarily transfer under my control whichever ship in the Italian-born fleet isn't equipped with a model. The British-born and French-born ships assigned to you should be more than enough to keep control in the Mediterranean."

"Aye, aye! Will do!" Warspite exclaimed, standing at attention. Suddenly, she felt _that chill_ again.

"Oh, Warspite?" Yamato whispered, with piercing eyes looked back at her, over the shoulder.

"Keep me informed on the progress of your research. The next time you fail to inform me instantly of a potential disaster...will be the last time you fail me at all. Dismissed."


End file.
